Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

A thunderstorm roared over Titans Tower, lightning crashing around them as Jason padded through its dark halls. 

The place was stranger in the dark. Shadows longer. Weapons gleaming like fangs. The ugly, hidden side of the place that no one wanted to acknowledge. 

The Teen Titans. The Robins. 

All kids playing dress-up. All just kids convinced that they could be heroes. Wearing masks that they thought could protect them until a warehouse was burning down around them. 

Jason thought that maybe his death would have changed something. 

But he guessed it was just another lie he had convinced himself to swallow down. 

Too bad for the little bird that he was done with letting things stay the same. 

“Robin,” Jason sang into the darkened hallway of Titans Tower. “Where are you?”

He couldn’t have gotten far. There weren’t that many directions he could have run in. Maybe, if Jason wasn’t familiar with the Tower the bird could have hid, but Jason remembered the Tower’s layout despite the crowbars blows to the head. 

Left here. Right here. 

A dark red stain on the carpet that told Jason his prey took another right. 

Jason wondered if he realised that he was trapped himself in the Tower that was supposed to be his sanctuary.

There was a sound of a shuffle and Jason whipped his head in the direction. 

“Found you,” he said through a vicious grin. The little bird’s blood was still wet on his hand and it created a violent imprint on the door as he shoved it open. 

The kid was there, panting and holding his bo staff up like it was his last hope. 

And perhaps it was given what Jason planned to do with him.

 “Hello, little bird,” Jason hissed, baring down on the terrified boy below him. His replacement was quivering and the swirling mess of his shift’s instincts and the green fury inside him told him to lunge.

To bite.

To make this kid scream.

He licked his tongue over his teeth and the kid paled at the small action.

“Who are you?” he asked, trying to sound intimidating but his voice was cracking from his fear. 

The green that was curled around Jason’s mind, purred as he heard it. 

“I’m a ghost,” Jason answered simply and he closed the door behind him. He didn’t look as he moved his hand to the keypad next to the door. He knew the combination by heart and typed in the code that completely sealed them off from the rest of the Tower. 

The pad glowed green as it understood his order, before shifting into red. 

Timothy Drake’s eyes kept flickering between the door and Jason. 

He caught Jason’s familiarity with the system, the way he knew codes that no one but the Titans should know. 

But that was inconsequential. Tim wouldn’t be alive long enough to tell anyone about it. 

“Does this ghost have a name? Or should I just call you Casper,” Tim said with forced sass. Jason heard Dick in the attempt, a frantic grasp of some of Nightwing’s bravado. A kid copying the man he thought of as a brother.

Another lie. 

The courage was gilded iron. The affection was a part in a play. 

Dick was never that confident on the inside; he just had a big, fucking mouth.

Dick never thought of him as an actual brother; he just liked to play pretend in his real life as much as his nightlife. 

It was a lie, and…

The caught the kid trying to press the same code Jason had put into the keypad behind his back. 

A stall for time.

“Nice try.”

Jason lunged forward, crashing the butt of the gun down on his Replacement’s hand. Fingers spasmed beneath the gun, and delicate bones gave way with a sickening snap. 

The kid blinked in horror, before his face tightened with agony and he screamed loud enough to rival the thunder outside.

And the sound was like a song to the green of Jason’s fury.

“No more smart little tricks Robin,” Jason said, taking the kid’s broken hand into his. “You’ve played your last hand.”

Jason squeezed the broken bones, eliciting another whimper of agony from the boy. 

“Get the joke?” he hissed through a crazed smile. 

His replacement didn’t answer. He just stared up at Jason with petrified terror.

“Did you hear me?” Jason pressed down on the broken hand again and relished the short scream. The tortured sound lit up the pleasure in Jason’s nerves. He pressed down harder, just for the hell of it, and Tim’s screams became louder and higher and more pained.

“Because I certainly hear you.”

“Let go!” Tim half-whined, half-whimpered, and he struggled as he tried to slip his mangled hand out of Jason’s grasp.  “Who the hell are you?”

Jason grinned, but it felt more like he was baring his fangs. “I’m you, but from a darker, cruller place.”

Tim yelped, kicking a foot out and managing to catch Jason in the hip. His leg buckled involuntarily and his grip on the boy slipped. He managed to squirm free, backing away on struggling feet. 

But he was still trapped. Still locked in the room with Jason.

Tim’s back hit a wall and the thump echoed throughout the space. 

Jason turned slowly, the lightning flashing behind him and casting his shadow across Tim’s horrified face. His terror reflected back in the whites of his eyes.

“Robin is a symbol,” Jason mused as he took a step closer. Thunder rumbled behind him, nearly shaking the Tower with its boom. “You’re supposed to be the smart bird. Can you tell me what a symbol is?”

Tim shuttered, pressing his back as far back against the wall as he possibly could. His blood kept dripping from his open knife wound , making a lazy puddle by Tim’s feet. 

“What?” Tim’s voice wobbled with the word.

“A symbol, Robin,” Jason hissed, pulling a gun out of his hoster. Tim’s eyes instantly caught the motion and his already pale face became ashen. His adam's apple bobbed on his throat. “Tell me what a fucking symbol is.”

“A-a symbol is a, uh, image that has meaning behind it,” Tim finally stuttered out. 

Jason’s smile widened and he clicked the safety off his gun. 

“An image with meaning. Like that ‘R’ you wear on your chest. Do you know what that ‘R’ means?”

Tim’s gaze steeled a bit and, ah, there’s a bit of the kid’s backbone. 

“Robin is hope. It’s light. It’s good.”

Jason shrugged, languidly like a predator. He held the gun up and it gleamed.

“Maybe it was, but then a kid was beaten to death in a warehouse while he screamed for a father that would never come.” Jason paused, trying not to remember the flash of the crowbar. The glow of the LED lights as he watched the clock countdown his life. 

The boom of the bomb right before his world was an inferno of fire. 

He tried not to remember the barrage of nightmares that chased him through the night. 

The nightmares that were supposed to have put an end to the legacy of Robin.

And yet, there was still another fucking bird flying around. 

“Robin was a symbol that killed a kid with a lie,” Jason said, slowly as he raised his gaze to his Replacement’s. The kid was tiny against the wall, and it welled up a little bit of doubt within Jason. 

He had promised himself that there would be no more dead kids, and yet…

The green whispered in the back of his head, pushing himself forward and through the doubt. His animal instincts snarled in delight at the temptation of blood. 

“And now that same symbol is going to get a kid killed again.”

Tim flinched so hard that it almost looked like a seizure. His terror was written into every inch of him. The frantic pace of his breath. The huge, round eyes. The flex of his fingers as he tried to scrabble away from Jason and...

There was a familiar snap in the atmosphere. 

The subtle drop in the air as one soul took a backseat to another.

Jason watched the shift closely and smiled when the kid’s shape blurred and his details changed. His body crumpled, nearly disappearing into a much smaller form.

“No,” the kid gasped through his shift. “No, no, no. Not now. Please.”

The begging made something cold run down Jason’s spine. 

A forced shift. 

That gave Jason pause as something scratched at the back of his mind. 

The inability to control shifts was a sign of an abused kid, a kid that wasn’t given enough attention and care to control the dual soul inside him. 

Learning to fully control a shift required calm and focus, but kids without parents typically didn’t have that. They had chaotic lives that fed into chaotic shifts and, without the anchor of a trusted figure, their own panic just made the cycle more vicious. 

It was rare in most places, but pretty common in Crime Alley where parents regularly gave themselves to a bottle or a needle before they could raise their kids. The result was a whole bunch of kids caught between animal and human, panicking because they had no way to control their own bodies. 

Jason had seen it dozens of times. 

Scared little kids who would be almost his height in one minute, just to be forced into a smaller form in the next. 

Little girls melting into tiny puppy dogs. Young boys disappearing into unfledged birds.

He had seen kids die from getting stuck at inopportune moments. Kids run over by cars that didn’t even know they were there or preyed upon by wild dogs. 

He had also seen unstable kids trapped and terrified so thoroughly that they couldn’t help but shift, only for traffickers to divide them up by which species they thought was the most valuable. 

The only reason Jason had escaped the same stuck fate was because his mother gave a damn about him and took the time to make sure he could control the second soul inside him.

The same attention that his Replacement apparently wasn’t given.

The blur of the kid’s body solidified into his new shape, and Jason snapped back into focus. 

The stink of blood was stuck in his nose and splattered across his clothes. The green still demanded more. It demanded so much and so insistently that the scratch at the back of Jason’s head was drowned out. 

His predator instincts rose up to replace it.

What was it? What kind of animal would the kid be?

There was a flash of spotted fur, the desperate dash of prey before a predator and Jason whipped a hand out to grab it.

Fingers caught and squeezed around a tiny ribcage and the kid gave a hiss of instant pain.

“Let me go,” Tim snapped as Jason lifted his hand and finally saw what kind of animal he had caught.

Small. Furred. With a shuttering nose, and quivering whiskers, and wide frantic blue eyes.

Figures that the kid would be some kind of vermin.

It was fitting for a rat that thought he could sneak into Jason’s home and take his place.

“Some kind of fancy rat,” Jason said, twisting his hand and inspecting Tim’s long and spotted body.

His replacement’s huge black and gold ears were pinned back against his head and Jason felt his full-body shudder run against his palm. 

If he was being honest, the kid obviously wasn’t a rat. He looked like some kind of mix between a leopard, a weasel, and a housecat. 

He had a skinny, svelte body that was coated in luxurious, spotted fur that any trafficker would die to get their hands on. Huge, round ears took up a good portion of his head and they flickered at every sound. The kid’s tiny claws were digging into the glove Jason was wearing and his long ringed tail was whipping with his panic.

“Heh, I was expecting a bird, Robin,” he said, giving the rodent a squeeze that had him whining in desperate pain.

Jason’s eyes slid to the glass double doors that led out onto the balcony.

The pit inside him hissed yes.

“But let’s see how well you can fly anyway.”

Jason took a step towards the balcony and he felt the moment that Tim put the pieces together. He felt the pause in his breath, right before it his panic really set in and his breath racketed up.

Tiny paws scrabbled at his palm in a frantic attempt at escape. Whines came out of his thin delicate throat. His head swivelled madly as he feverishly looked between Jason and the gaping darkness of the sky he was about to be thrown into.

Jason wrenched open one of the doors and the spray of rain and biting cold-soaked him.

Lightning crackled overhead and the roll of thunder was almost loud enough to drown out Tim’s whimpering.

This was it. It was almost all over. The replacement was almost taken care of.

Jason went to the edge of the balcony and stretched an arm out.

The weasel-thing hung precariously onto his hand, small claws digging into his leather glove for dear life. Tim lifted his head and, even though he was an animal, his terror was as clear as it was when he was human.

“How does it feel, replacement?” Jason hissed as the rain pounded on both of them. He could feel it dripping down his hair and he could see it beginning to drench Tim’s gold and black fur.

“To look death straight in the eyes.”

Lightning flashed against and Jason’s skin became a deathly pale shade in the sudden burst of light.

“To know that in a couple of seconds your bones are going to be a broken mess under your skin.”

He squeezed the animal and it let out a squeak of pain that made the pit purr. Jason could feel those fragile bones, whining under the pressure, threatening to buckle. He loosened right before one of them gave.

“To be just about to die and have no one is coming to save you.”

“Hood,” Tim’s voice was thin and terrified. His rapid, panicked breathing made it hard for him to get the words out. “Hood, please you don’t have to do this. ”

For a second, he paused. 

Something far back in his head told him that this was just a kid. Barely sixteen. Probably didn’t even have his driver’s license yet. Jason had always told himself that he didn’t hurt—

But before the thought fully took form, the green was there to drown him. 

The rat.

Took his place. 

Stole his family.

Saw Jason’s empty uniform and filled grave and thought he could snatch what was Jason’s.

Another bird thrown into the sky, which meant another bird to be shot down.

It washed over his hesitations and swallowed all his inhibitions and made Jason smile slowly. 

Tim Drake might have started this, but Jason would be the one to put an end to it. 

“You’re wrong, replacement. I’ve had to do this since the day you put on that uniform.”

Slowly, he reached up and unhooked his helmet from his head. He pulled it off with one hand, and then he went for his mask. It ripped off and stung Jason’s face as he revealed his identity.

The rat had a sharp intake of breath and Jason watched as his eyes rapidly took in the angles of his face. 

“Jason,” Tim whispered in shock. “You’re alive.”

“Yeah, the whole dead thing didn’t take,” he hissed, baring his teeth. “But hopefully you’ll like it better than me.”

The rat’s eyes widened and quick sobs caught in his chest. “Jason, please, please, plea—”

And Jason opened his hand.

The cat weasel in his palm gasped as the hold on him disappeared and thin claws flexed into the leather of Jason’s gloves. The animal hung from his hands by his claws as his small back legs kicked wildly in the air. 

All it would take was one shake. One quick violent moment and the rat would go plummeting to his death and then he would finally know what it feels like to be a bloody smear because of someone else’s hand. 

“Jason,” the rat cried as his small body swung over the black void of empty air. “Jason, please. You don’t have to do this. Please.”

Laughter licked at his thoughts. 

But so did the sound of begging. The plea of a boy caught in the hand of a monster. 

Manic laughter over the terrified form of a child staring up at his soon-to-be killer. 

The same stare that Tim was giving Jason right now.

The green hissed in Jason’s ear but suddenly it seemed to be drowned out Tim’s begging as he tried to climb further up Jason’s hand.

“Please, please. Don’t do it. Don’t—”

The kid slipped, one of his clawed hands not catching on the leather of Jason’s glove. He yelped as his body jerked and nearly made him lose his grip completely. Tim screamed as he felt gravity claw at his skin, almost completing Jason’s job for him.

“I can’t,” the kid panted as he tried to desperately pull himself up. His small furred front legs obviously didn’t have the strength though, especially not when the kid had a broken paw.“I can’t hold on much longer.”

Jason sighed, and the green tried to break through into his brain but something held it back.

A kid. This was just a kid.

He had nearly killed a kid. 

Jason pulled his arm in, hanging Tim over the balcony instead of the abyss of San Francisco’s skyline. 

He brought his other hand up to support the kid’s backside and curled the tiny animal into his chest. The kid was trembling like a leaf and digging his claws into Jason’s chest. His fear of being hung over certain death again was so clear and Jason wondered how he didn’t see it before. 

How in the hell had he looked at this child and saw something to be killed instead of protected?

“It’s okay,” Jason whispered as he gently pet the cat-weasel’s head, “It’s okay. I got you now.”

“Please don’t d-do it,” Tim whimpered, clutching onto Jason as much as he possibly could with paws. “I’ll l-listen to you. I’ll give Robin up, just please d-d-don’t k-kill me.”

“It’s alright,” Jason hushed, bringing them both back inside. “I’m not going to hurt you anymore, Tim.”

The words were oil in his tongue, a bitter taste of what he had done and the damage he had wrought. 

Against a kid. 

An abused kid who couldn’t even control his shifts.

Jason sighed, rubbing his forehead. The green still crashed like a violent wave in his head but he didn’t feel himself drowning in it. Especially not as the rat clung onto Jason like he was a life raft in a churning sea. 

He looked up and took in the broken room. Bullets in the walls. The dark stains on the floor. The smear of blood where Tim had tried to press a code into the keypad.

Jason’s instincts roared in his head, but they were shifting. 

As the green and predator receded, something like a protector came up to replace them. 

It was the part of him that tried to nurse Crime Alley kids out of their forced shifts when they got stuck. The part of him that tried to kill every trafficker he could. The part that saw just a kit when he looked at the little rat in his arms.

A tiny, helpless kit that should have never been hurt. 

The small animal trembled with the echoes of being hung off the balcony and the pain from his wounds. He trembled… until all the sudden he went completely limp.

“Hey, kid,” Jason said, jostling the cat-weasel in his hands. “Wake up, rat.”

But Tim remained passed out and dead to the world. 

And completely helpless to everything surrounding him.

Something urgent blared in that protective part of him. 

Jason couldn’t just leave the kit here – out in the open where a predator could snap him up. 

Maybe it was hypocritical for Jason to be the one worrying. After all, he had just been the one preying on the rat and Tim was most likely safe in this Tower because he was surrounded by his drugged-up allies but…

Jason looked down at the kit. 

Defenseless. Bleeding. Alone. 

Jason had been all of those things. Multiple times in his life. 

He couldn’t imagine himself leaving this kid in the same position.

“Fuck,” he whispered to himself and his decision began to crystallise in his head. He hated his own conclusion, but he hated thinking about leaving the kit for who-knows-how many hours by himself. 

So a plan formed in his mind against his will. 

He would take the rat to one of his safehouses and fix him up. He would make sure the kid is out of danger and not on the edge of a panic attack. Then, he would dump the kid, gift wrapped in bandages and painkillers, right into bat territory and then, the kid would go home. 

Jason would still get out of this mess with dirty hands, but at least they wouldn’t be stained with a child’s blood. 

Jason turned in the empty room, feeling helpless himself as he clutched the kid to his chest. 

Tim’s neck was at an awkward angle, and he shifted his arms so the rat was in a more comfortable position. His fur was still wet from the rain and every once in a while, the kid gave a shuttering jerk. Jason wondered if Tim was cold even through the black-out and the fur. 

He just held the rat tighter. 

Nurse the kid back to health. Dump him in B’s territory. Get the hell out of dodge. 

It was a relatively simple plan.

Maybe simple enough to work. 

Jason rubbed a thumb over the fur between Tim’s shoulder blades and gave a heavy sigh. 

Bandaging the wounds and splinting the broken bone was going to be a pain in his ass while the kid was still a rat. He would have to wait till the kid could trade fur back to skin to really get it right, but for now, he could focus on getting the kid dry and warm. 

He went to a bathroom, grabbed a towel, and began to run it over the wet rat. 

God, Tim was even more pitiful with half-damp messy fur that went in all directions. 

Once the cat-weasel was mostly dry, Jason dumped the towel and searched for the softest blanket he could find. He bundled the small animal up, wrapping him like he was a burrito. 

Tim looked ridiculous but it would keep him from accidentally throwing himself off Jason’s bike if he came to while Jason was driving him back to a safehouse. 

Then, when Jason was finally happy with the kid’s bundle, he gave the Tower one last look and left.

Chapter Text

Tim woke up surrounded by cloth and rocking with someone’s gait. 

His left paw hurt every time he moved it, but he couldn’t quite figure out why. Had he broken it during patrol? On a Titans mission? Skateboarding?

He blinked but his vision was filled with a white and blue towel and he could only get glimpses of the artificial light overhead. 

He tried to put the pieces together but nothing rang the correct bells in his head. 

The gait paused before changing. The lope of it was still steady but heaving too. It took him a second to realise they were going upstairs.

Probably the Manor then.

Tim twitched his whiskers and flexed his back legs. They were stuck in the towel along with the rest of him. A string of fabric caught on his back claws and itched against the skin in between his toes.

He knew it wouldn’t work, but he tried shifting. 

His dual soul stayed stubbornly fixed on the linsang part of him though. It didn’t even respond to him poking at it or giving it a little mental shove. It was so fixed, it almost felt like he wasn’t human at all. 

No. Don’t, Tim, he told himself. Don’t think of it like that. 

Don’t even think it’s a possibility.

Tim shook his head as much as he could in the towel bundle that he had been shoved into. 

Focus on what’s at hand. He was stuck in his shift (common). He had an injury he didn’t remember getting (also common). He was being carried by someone of unknown identity, but it was probably Dick (again frustratingly common ). 

He sighed to himself, trying not to think of the frustration that was welling up inside him. The burn of it filled his chest and made him hate himself even more.

Always small. Always delicate. Always an animal .

Something between a sob and a growl wanted to escape his throat but he shoved it down. 

It wasn’t useful to think about it, and it only made that animal part of him bite back with a vengeance.

It didn’t matter what he wanted in the end. He would still be bound by the shifting soul inside him and it didn’t care whether he wanted his opposable thumbs back. 

He swallowed down another sound of distress. 

Get a hold of yourself, Tim. Control one thing about your body for once in your life.

The person carrying him reached the top of the stairs 

“Dick?” he questioned, trying to twist so he could catch a glimpse of his older brother. The cloth stayed partially wrapped around his head and he huffed as he tried to pull his snout out of it. It constricted as he tugged and he made an exasperated yip that Dick usually jumped to help at. 

But Dick didn’t move and the arm holding him stayed still. Why wasn’t Dick helping to get out of the towel? He was obviously awake now.

It struggled in the cloth more and a new thought popped into his head. Wasn’t Dick scheduled to be on an off-world mission for another two days?

“Dick?” Tim tried again.

“Wrong bird, Robin,” a gruff voice said above Tim and his blood went cold. 

Hood. 

Red hood. 

Jason… maybe?

Thoughts floated around his head and made a confusing image. 

Jason was dead, but Jason was also holding him over the black pit of empty air and ready to let go. 

Jason was dead, but Jason was drawing him to his chest and promising him that he wasn’t going to hurt him anymore. 

Jason was dead, but Jason was…

Trying to kill him. 

Tim finally managed to get his head out of the towel and claw his way to vision. The world snapped into clarity all around him. This wasn’t Wayne Manor with all its glitter and cozy, welcoming golden light. It was a dingy apartment complex, practically falling down around them. It stank with disuse and the smell in the air was dead. 

A pale hand came into view and unlocked a doorknob in front of Tim’s nose. He must have been tucked under an elbow. He could feel the press of an arm and a ribcage, and a hand supporting under him. 

Caging him at all sides.

He tried flexing his paws again, testing the possibility of escape but…

Arms always seemed stronger when Tim was helpless and tiny and caged in this useless, furry body. 

But he needed to go. He needed to wriggle free and get back to his allies and figure out how to call someone when he only had his paws and…

He needed to get himself unstuck but it was hopeless to try to access his second soul when he felt panic beginning to roll in his stomach. 

The voice grumbled a curse and a single hand fumbled for a key. 

He needed to escape before he was taken inside. 

His time was running out.

He needed to—

The door opened to reveal an apartment. 

The panic that had just started to develop began twisting into full-blown terror. 

Tim was brought inside.

No, no, no, he screamed inside his mind as the door closed. 

A door was so easy for a human, but for a linsang. For a tiny, furred animal that wasn’t more than a foot long when he stood on his back legs and had absolutely no way of reaching a door handle. 

A door might as well have been an opening to a jail cell. Because if closed, it locked him inside with the Red Hood.

“Okay, I think the first order of business is the broken—”

“Let me go,” Tim screeched, trying desperately to slither out of the hand holding him.

Jason yelped, his hands tightening on Tim as he writhed against the blankets. He had hoped the moment of surprise would loosen the grip, but the man just held him closer. 

“What the f—”

“I’ll bite you,” Tim threatened, baring his tiny teeth, even though they would only draw a couple of drops of blood. “I swear I’ll bite you.”

“Are you trying to get me to drop you, rat!” Jason squawked, holding Tim so that his hands were far away from Tim’s small fangs. “Don’t you remember how well that almost went over last time?”

Tim did. He remembered being held over the sky, completely at the whim of a man that could drop him to his death or crush his bones to a mess inside his skin. 

The loss of ground and having nothing to hold on to sent desperate shivers down his spine. He was stubbornly avoiding looking down at the floor and the thought of suddenly plummeting filled him with dread but…

He had to escape.

He couldn’t let himself be locked in here with someone who could kill him at any moment.

“Let me go!” Tim yelled again but the grip on him didn’t loosen even a little bit. 

“I’m trying to help you.”

“Help me by letting me go!”

“Really?” Jason said, his voice thick with disbelief. “Because exactly how far do you think you could go while stuck in a shift and nursing a broken paw. If I let you out there, you’ll become dog food in an hour.”

Jason…

Jason didn’t know that. 

Tim could make it. He could figure out a way to get through the city and avoid stray dogs and…

Go across the country back to Gotham. 

Hopelessness burbled up in Tim’s chest. 

He didn’t know how long he would be stuck for and Jason was right… as a linsang he was vulnerable.

As a linsang with a broken paw, he was pathetic. 

Tim slumped in Jason’s arm and tried to ignore how much it made him want to cry. 

It didn’t even matter when the door closed because Tim was still trapped in this helpless joke of a body. 

Jason brought him inside and put him on a table. He was still bundled in the blanket and struggled to shove them off. 

“What’s your plan for me?” He asked, even though he wasn’t sure he wanted to hear it. He was completely at the man’s mercy.

Hood grunted and walked across the room to a cabinet. He took out a beaten-up-looking bag and brought it to the table near Tim. 

“First, let’s get the blood out of your fur. Then, we are going to treat your leg.”

Tim was silent as Jason went into the apartment’s tiny kitchen to wet a washcloth. 

He came back, sat, and then looked at Tim expectantly. 

Tim gulped, his small prey animal heart racing as he dipped his head into a nod. 

Jason plopped the washcloth on Tim’s back and ran all of his fur in the wrong direction. He shivered at the strange feeling and scrunched his nose in distaste, making all his whiskers twitch. 

It was nice to get rid of the dried blood, but the sensation of all his fur going in different directions was instantly uncomfortable. 

He resisted the instinct to begin licking his fur back into place until Jason pulled the rusty washcloth away. Once it was gone, he immediately began smoothing his fur back down and getting rid of the wrong feeling. 

“Okay, short stack, let’s see your paw.”

Jason held out an expectant hand and Tim hesitated.

Jason had broken his hand. He had laughed as Tim screamed and whimpered in pain. And now…

He wanted to fix what he had broken?

“Come on, rat. I’m not going to wait here all day.”

Tim jerked to follow the command, not willing to test any more of Jason’s patience. 

The man grunted (did he know how much he sounded like Bruce when he did that?) and carefully inspected the paw. 

“Wh, what will you do with me after you’ve fixed my arm?”

“I’m not ‘fixing’ it completely. I’m just splinting it.”

Jason got two wooden sticks out of the medicine bag and they were roughly Tim’s size. He didn’t know why Jason would have animal splints, let alone splints for an animal about his size. 

“And after you splint it?”

Jason’s eyes slid up to meet his. 

“Do you always have this many questions?”

A rare streak of frustration ran through Tim suddenly. 

“Well, I’m sorry I want to know what the man who kidnapped me and tried to kill me has planned for me.”

Those hard, green eyes didn’t give away any of Jason’s emotions. 

“What do you think I have planned for you?”

What did Tim think that Jason had planned for him?

He had thought murder but… why would a murderer spend all the time getting Tim clean and treating his broken bone?

He had had so many opportunities to kill Tim, so if he really wanted to he would have done it.

So something else other than Tim’s death.

His mind whirled as he tried to put pieces together. Jason’s gentle hands fit the splint on his broken arm. 

He could be a trophy or a pet. With a small animal shifter, those could be one and the same. 

Tim looked around the room, trying to find the glint of a metal cage. The room was sparse though, and strikingly similar to Bruce’s safehouses.

“Figure it out yet, rat?” Jason asked as he began to wrap Tim’s leg in gauze. 

“I-I don’t know.”

Jason tsked and finished tying off the gauze. 

“I thought you were the smart bird,” he muttered before starting to pack his things again. 

Tim tested the emergency splint. He would have to get a cast, hopefully after he shifted back to human, but the splint would keep the bones from beginning to heal in the wrong positions. It was competent. Neat. The same thing Tim would have done and had done in all the practice Bat medical training. 

“So,” Jason said, returning to the table.  “How long are you going to be stuck in your shift for?”

Tim froze. 

He hadn’t told Jason he got stuck.

The man chuckled and Tim didn’t know how to interpret the sound. “Don’t look so surprised. I know the signs of a stuck shift and if you could shift back you would have done so hours ago.” 

He leaned forward and smiled. Tim was reminded of the glinting teeth of a predator. 

“So tell me, how long do you think you’re going to be stuck for?”

Tim curled his tail into his body. It was awkward with his splinted leg, but he made it work. He hated how tiny he seemed next to the hulking form of Jason. 

“I don’t know.”

“Come on, you have to have a guesstimate.”

Tim hesitated, thinking about weeks caught in cages and trapped behind bars. He wasn’t in a cage, so maybe shorter? The broken paw might increase the time though. 

“Two weeks?” He hazarded a guess. “Maybe three?”

He hoped it wasn’t more than that. 

“Fuck,” Jason whispered, glaring at something beyond Tim. He was angry, though Tim couldn’t exactly figure out why. 

“Does Bruce know about this?”

Bruce?

Why would Bruce be concerned about Tim’s stuck shifts? They were Tim’s own fault for not having enough control and Bruce didn’t need to be burdened with Tim’s problems. 

He already took so much time from Bruce. 

Tim couldn’t possibly ask the man for more. 

“No. Bruce doesn’t want to be bothered with this.”

Jason’s fist clenched and a green tint came over his eyes. 

“Bruce doesn’t want to be bothered with his abused and stuck-shift kid, huh?”

Tim shivered and shook his head, but the fury didn’t leave Jason’s gaze. 

“No, it’s not like that… it’s just… it’s my fault. Bruce doesn’t need to care about things that are my fault.”

Jason was silent, before he whispered another curse and forced himself to breathe. Tim recognised the pattern of Bruce’s breathing techniques and slowly the green faded from his eyes. 

The linsang stored that little bit of information in his head for later. 

“That’s fucked up, Tim,” Jason said through a heavy sigh. “I don’t even have the time or mental bandwidth to tell you how fucked up it is.”

He pointed to Tim either though there wasn’t anyone else in the room he could possibly be talking to. 

“You need to get some therapy.”

Jason Todd… the boy that died and apparently came back to life… the man who tried to kill him and then turned around to try to fix it… 

Was telling him to get therapy?

What the hell was he supposed to say in response to that?

“... okay?”

“Good,” Jason said dramatically like he had accomplished something. 

None of this made any sense. 

Maybe Tim had never woken up. Maybe he was still caught in some kind of mess-up fever dream. 

That would certainly make more sense than a dead boy telling him that he was the one that had problems.

“I guess I’ll text Nightwing now,” Jason said, hefting Tim into his arms. 

Tim yelped at the sudden movement of being lifted. His mind flashed back to pain, to being held over certain death, but… 

This wasn’t that. 

Jason was warm when he held Tim close and careful to avoid Tim’s splinted leg, which stuck out awkwardly from his body. He made sure not to jostle any of Tim’s wounds and petted a hand down the back of Tim’s neck when he walked to the bed. 

The sudden tenderness and shock of something so different than what Tim had expected almost distracted him from Jason’s last words.

“Wait… what did you say?” Tim asked as Jason placed him on a pillow. He was being incredibly gentle for a man that had tried to kill him not even a couple of hours ago and Tim still couldn’t wrap his head around it. 

“I’m texting Dickface,” Jason muttered, sitting on the edge of the bed. He pulled out his phone and the glow of the screen made the angles of his face starker.

The words didn’t make any more sense the second time he said it.

“You’re texting… Dick?”

“Yeah,” Jason answered absentmindedly as he tapped on the screen. 

It still didn’t make sense.

“You… you have Dick’s number?”

“Yeah. That’s the funny thing about dying. A clown with a crowbar took my life, but he didn’t manage to take Dick’s stupid phone number song out of my head.”

Tim… Tim didn’t know how to respond to that. Especially because he suspected that the same phone number song was ringing in his own head. 

Sure enough, Tim recognised the tune when he heard Jason singing Dick’s phone number under his breath as he typed digits into the phone. 

“—nine-two-seven-five-three. Call me in case of an emergency.”

Tim didn’t know how to explain the feelings that welled up inside him when Jason sang the same song that Dick had taught him. They made him want to cry even though he didn’t know why exactly.

“Okay, rat,” Jason said as he clicked his phone off and tucked it back into his pocket. 

“That should light a fire under Big Bird’s ass. I can’t imagine he’ll take a long time getting here.”

Jason stood and the bed rocked. Tim rocked with the spring of the mattress. 

He was silent as he watched Hood gather up his things and strap his guns back into their holsters. 

“So I guess this is goodbye. Have a nice life. Remember to get some fucking therapy.”

He should feel afraid to see those firearms back in his hands but… the emotion didn’t come up. 

“You’re leaving?” Tim asked, surprised at how much his own voice wobbled. He hadn’t even realised how much he wanted Jason to stay until the words were tumbling out of his mouth. 

“I can’t be here when Dick comes back,” Jason explained, tugging on his leather jacket. “I did try to kill you after all and I don’t think Dick would want to play happy family with me after that.”

Tim should care about that. He should want the man gone as quickly as possible because he had nearly stolen Tim’s life but…

If Jason left, that also meant Tim was being left alone.

“You can’t leave me,” Tim whined, his breath catching in his tiny chest. He tried to scramble off the pillow, but the splint around his broken paw was making his motions jerky and cumbersome. He would never be able to catch Jason if he walked towards the door. 

He wasn’t even sure he could get off the bed. 

“Please don’t leave me.”

The man met his gaze and a flicker of a dozen emotions traveled across his eyes. 

He sighed, before walking back to the bed and gently petting over Tim’s ears. 

“It’s okay, Timbit. Dick’s coming to get you. You won’t be left here.”

How did he know that though? Tim had thought that too and been proven wrong so many times before. Parents who promised to come back after a day, a week, a month, just not showing up. Leaving Tim locked in places he hated just because they didn’t care he hated them. 

“Can’t you stay?” Tim pleaded, his claws pressed into Jason’s skin but not drawing blood. 

It had never worked when he asked his father, but maybe Jason would be different.

Maybe Jason would stay. 

“No,” Jason whispered and it cracked apart the tiny bit of hope in Tim’s chest. 

Of course it wouldn’t be any different. 

“I’m sorry, Tim,” and it actually looked like he meant it. “I’m sorry for… everything, but I can’t be here when Dick gets here.”

Tim’s ears pressed into his skull and he dropped Jason’s gaze. 

He was stupid. He had been through this so many times and he still hoped things would be different. That for once someone would stay .

He didn’t know why he still hoped. 

It hurt so much more when he hoped. 

“It’s okay,” he said, even though he wasn’t okay and loneliness was beginning to sink into his ribcage again. “You can go.”

Jason hesitated. He opened his mouth like he was going to say something else, but he closed it. He kept looking at Tim and there was something painfully raw in the expression.

There was a minute of silence and Tim miserably tried to force himself to get used to it. 

He had been alone before. He could do it again just fine. 

“I left you food and water,” Jason said, pointing to a plastic bag on the bed. “It should be enough for a couple of days, though I doubt Dick will take that long. You’ll be fine.”

Tim had heard it before. The distant, polite speech of how he would be fine right before everyone left him in cages. 

It never mattered how many times people said that he would be fine. Getting left by himself, locked in a room and a body he couldn’t escape, never stopped feeling not fine. 

“Okay,” he whispered, even though it hurt and he wanted to say anything but it.

“I promise, Tim, Dick will come to get you soon.”

He didn’t know for sure. ‘Soon’ was a squishy concept. For his parents, it could mean three days or three weeks or three months. 

He wasn’t completely sure what it meant for Jason or Dick.

But he didn’t voice his worries. 

He just curled into as small of a ball as possible, tucking his tail up near his muzzle. 

The room was a huge, echoey cavern around him and Jason hadn’t even left it yet. 

The man finished packing his supplies and lugged a duffel bag over one shoulder. He went to the door and swung it open, before pausing to look back at Tim. 

“I promise, Tim, someone’s coming.”

Tim turned, putting his back towards Jason. He never could bear watching the moment doors clicked close and the locks snapped shut. 

“Turn the light off when you go,” he muttered. “I’m nocturnal so I have night vision anyways.”

He didn’t see Jason’s face, but he saw the lights blink shut and the world plunge into darkness. 

He only had to wait a minute before the door closed and Tim was left alone again. 

He still wasn’t completely convinced this wasn’t a strange fever dream.

Chapter Text

Jason was not stalking the rat. 

He just… he couldn’t get what the kid had said out of his head. 

Bruce didn’t care about an abused son that got stuck in his shift. Bruce couldn’t be bothered with a boy who was terrified of his own body.

Jason had seen the signs of abuse on Tim, even though it was hard to match that image with the young vigilante that confidently beat up bad guys and quipped like the best of them.

Jason wasn’t stalking… he was just keeping tabs. 

Jason watched as the little bird flitted between the skyscrapers of Gotham. The neon lights of billboards splayed bright shades onto his form and marred the traffic light colours of the Robin uniform.

He wasn’t sure if it was the bleed of the neon lights messing with the classic Robin colours or if the Pit really was tampering down, but seeing the uniform drew less fury from Jason than it ever had. 

It had stopped drawing that kind of reaction months ago, and now it barely drew a lick of the green up Jason’s throat. 

The boy stopped on a roof, and then raised a hand. 

It only took a second before a tiny, furry form zoomed from another building and landed on his closed palm. 

Most people didn’t know that Nightwing, the vigilante that struck terror into criminals’ hearts everywhere, was just a tiny sugar glider shifter. Jason had hardly believed it himself the first time Dick had shifted and then glided himself onto Jason’s head. He got used to it quickly though because the man had absolutely no sense of self-preservation and glided friggin’ everywhere and from anything. 

There were rumours about the Bats being shifters. There always had been. 

But the rumour mills always expected grand animals—wolves, eagles, big cats or, most uncreatively, bats— they never expected a sugar glider or a fisher or whatever cat-rat-thing Tim was. 

It worked in their favour sometimes. Goons didn’t know what to expect and Dick could almost appear to teleport if he timed his shifts and glides right. It also made reconnaissance much easier when they were able to squish into tiny, but protected holes. 

There were drawbacks, of course. The world was scarier when you were smaller and your body was more delicate. Jason knew that firsthand.

Jason watched Dick crawl up on Tim’s closed fist, his long fluffy tail twitching excitedly. The sugar glider must be talking because he watched as Tim spoke back, a happy tilt to his head. Tim raised the other hand and scratched under Dick’s chin as the sugar glider leaned into the fingers. 

Jason remembered the days when he had stood in that uniform. When he had held up his hand and caught his sugar glider of a brother. When he had been in Tim’s place.

Jason expected to feel the burn of the Pit’s anger but an ache of nostalgia only rose up in him as he watched his big brother chat with Tim. 

Jason turned to leave.

The kid… the kid was fine. He was in Jason’s place… he would be fine. 

Jason told himself it over and over again as he watched Dick shift and gracefully balance on two legs. The man laughed and ruffled Tim’s hair. 

He looked far from the abused, terrified kid that Jason had taken from the Titans Tower.

Tim would be fine. 

Jason would be fine.

He would be. 

And then Tim disappeared from patrol within the same week his parents were scheduled to be home and the alarm bells in Jason’s head rang all over again. 

Jason slipped through the window of the Drake Manor and it felt like slipping into the Titans Tower. The feeling had been exciting that first time, but now it just sent a terrible, sickening feeling through Jason’s stomach. 

This time he was coming for very different reasons though. 

He didn’t want to hurt the kid. He just wanted to settle the uneasy feeling in his stomach and show himself that he was worrying for nothing. 

The kid was fine. Dick obviously cared for him and had taken the kid under his wing. Jason was making up abuse that wasn’t actually there. 

But… he had seen the way that Tim fought his own shift. He had heard Tim tell him that he got stuck for weeks on end. The kid hadn’t shifted back to protect himself and had stayed in a weaker form. 

That wasn’t something that someone who had control of their shifts did and there had to be a source of the unease.

Jason stepped down into what looked like an abandoned room and clicked the window shut. 

When it was locked again, he looked up and took stock. 

The Drake Manor was creepy from the outside and it was even creepier on the inside. It had none of the warmth that the Wayne Manor had and there were no signs that anyone had lived here in years. It was a house for ghosts and Jason, being dead once already, hated how it made him feel like he was in a crypt. 

He couldn’t imagine what growing up here must have felt like and it was no wonder Tim spent so much time with the Waynes instead of being stuck in this house. 

Jason left the room, walking down the halls to where he knew Tim’s bedroom was. The manor was dead silent all around him. 

The eyes of painted Drake ancestors stared down at him, watching as he paced down the halls. 

He found Tim’s door, as nondescript as the others, and opened. 

Fuck, even the kid’s room seemed like a grave. 

Jason scanned for the tale-tell sign of a computer glow and was just about to leave when…

“Jason?”

He froze, eyes searching the dark again, this time for a smaller, furrier form. 

“Tim?”

“I’m here.”

There was a rattle and Jason’s eyes snapped up to the dark box in the corner. 

Two bright eyes watched him from inside it and horror-filled him as he realised what it was. 

“Tim, what the hell are you doing in the cage?”

Jason rushed up and the image of Tim came into startling focus. 

Tim was curled up in the middle of the unforgiving plastic, blinking like he couldn’t quite believe Jason was actually there. He looked so small, huddled into a position Dick called “a little loaf” with his legs tucked under him and his fluffy tail wrapped around his body.

He didn’t have any bedding;  no blankets, no rags, no hanging hammock. There was nothing in there to bring him any comfort. Hell, he only had a water bottle to meet his needs. His food dish was completely bare, not even a crumb. And Jason didn’t know what made him angrier: thinking that Tim possibly could be hungry and unable to access any food or thinking about Tim being forced to take his meals in a small box. 

The whole image was just… sad. Hardly fitting for an animal, let alone an animal with a human mind and keen awareness of exactly what was happening to him.

“Jason?” he asked again, his voice wavering. “You’re real?”

Jason gave the rat a flat look. “Yes, of course I’m real. Why wouldn’t I be real?”

The cat-weasel blinked and shook his head, looking down. “I… I didn’t know. I had almost convinced myself it was a hallucination. But…”

He raised his head again.

“You really did splint my leg and called Dick to come get me.”

Jason rolled his eyes. “Yes, I did and you didn’t answer my first question. Why the hell are you in a cage?

“What do you mean?” Tim asked lightly as if nothing was wrong. As if he wasn’t a shifter locked in a cage like some kind of disobedient pet.

“What do I mean? Tim, you’re in a cage!”

Tim tilted his head. “Of course, I am. My parents are out for the evening and I got stuck a few days ago.”

Tim was stuck… for days apparently… and his parents had left him.

Jason forced his breathing to even, trying to keep Pit Rage from crawling up his throat.

Company was important for stuck shifters. It helped ease their nerves and lessen their time spent stuck. Getting stuck in a shift was about anxiety and having other people around, especially people you trusted to protect you, helped ease the panic that locked kids into one form or another.

So seeing Tim. Isolated physically, not only from family but from literally anything that could bring him comfort, while he was stuck in a shift…

It broke Jason’s heart. It tore him to pieces and made him want to scoop Tim up and never let him go. 

“Okay, okay,” Jason said, trying to calm himself down and not letting his own emotions bubble over. Tim needed Jason, he didn’t need Jason’s green temper. “Why are you in a cage exactly?”

“I couldn’t shift back,” he said as he watched Jason test the door of the cage. The thing was fucking pad-locked and there was no way in hell Tim would have been able to slip out of it. 

“If I decide to be an animal, then it’s only fitting that I get treated like one.”

Jason froze mid-assessment of the lock. 

What the fuck?

He slowly raised his eyes and found Tim still watching, ears peeking towards him. 

“Please tell me you’re joking.” 

“No, of course not,” said Tim with his small nose wrinkling in indignation.  The tip of his tail twitched. “Punishing one form so that your body naturally favours the other is how you learn control. Everyone knows that.”

Horror and fury raced through Jason but he fought to keep it from showing on his face.

No, everyone did not know that. 

Because that was the exact wrong way to help a shifter manage their shifts. It was a recipe for disaster and a cruel way to convince Tim that being in a cage was good for him. 

Like it wasn’t a violation of child abuse laws and fucking hideous way to try to control a child. 

Did Dick and Bruce know? 

Was this what Tim had meant when he said that Bruce didn’t care and couldn’t be bothered? That he left Tim to figure out his stuck shifts alone in a cage? That he condoned whatever fucked up form of punishment this was?

Fury rippled in him, green washing through his vision. The tint of it was filling his sight until another thought struck him.

Unless Bruce didn’t know…

The anger settled down, but still rolled like a snake in his stomach.

Bruce was obtuse like that and for all the man’s faults he had never allowed child abuse of any kind. He had never hit Jason, even when Jason had bit him and scratched his claws into Bruce’s skin. 

And Dick… Dick certainly would have never allowed this. 

Jason had seen Dick interact with the kid. He had seen that possessive and protective tilt to Dick’s body, the same one that Jason used to hide behind. 

If they had known, they would have taken Tim back to the Manor and would have never let him come back. 

They would have…

Probably… 

Once upon a time, Jason had always believed they would always be there to save him. 

He sighed, massaging the headache that was beginning to form between his eyes. 

He needed to focus on the thing at hand, which was Tim’s furry rat ass stuck in a cage. 

“I’m busting you out. No one deserves to grow up in a fucking cage.” Jason said, almost surprising himself with how much he meant it. 

Tim tilted his furry little head and his expression did not nearly have enough agreement. 

“I’m not ‘growing up in a cage’. I’m only put in here when I can’t shift back to being human.”

Jason growled at the thought of Tim going in there every single time his body did something out of his control. 

“And how often is that, rat? A couple hours in the day? Multiple times a week? What’s the longest you’ve been stuck for?”

The cat-weasel flinched back, his tiny shoulders hunching and his head dipping with shame. He almost looked like he was hiding behind his own fluffy tail.

“I’m not a rat,” he snapped. “I’m a linsang. There’s a difference.”

Fucking annoying little…

“Rat. Lin-song. Same difference. Just answer the question, kid."

“Three months.”

Jason stopped breathing. 

No, that couldn’t be right. Jason had been expecting maybe a month, a month and a half...but three months? A quarter of a year spent behind bars for something he couldn’t control. Put in a cage and trapped in a small body and imprisoned twice over. 

What the hell were the Drakes doing?

Were they trying to get Tim permanently stuck in a shape that he obviously was uncomfortable in? Trying to change him into an animal that he didn’t want to be?

Did they even care at all?

“Three months,” Jason repeated. “You’re serious?”

Tim nodded his small head.

“And you were in the cage the entire time?”

“It wasn’t all the time. The maid took me out to clean the cage, give me baths and cut my claws.”

“And how long did that take? An hour?”

“Yeah…”

“Fuck that. That isn’t nearly enough time. How the hell didn’t Bruce and Dick know?”

“They thought I was on vacation with my parents.”

Fury licked at the walls of Jason’s stomach. It was like the Pit, but instead of wanting to rip his replacement to shreds, it wanted to rip his replacement’s parents to shreds. Same rage, but a different target. 

“Your parents weren’t even here. They had locked you in a cage while you were stuck and they left you here so they could go on vacation.”

Tim’s little face skewed up. His tiny pink nose twitching his delicate whiskers. “Well, it sounds terrible when you say it like that.”

“Tim, literally what part of this isn’t terrible?” Jason had to physically keep himself from shouting. The fury kept rolling in his stomach and hissing in his ear. 

The linsang stood, his tiny claws flexing into the hard plastic underneath him. His long tail whipped out behind his and the cage wasn’t even big enough for him to swish it around without it slapping against a wall. 

“They feed me. They give me water. They hire maids to make sure I’m kept clean.” 

Tim’s breath was getting faster in his tiny chest. 

“They love me,” he said. 

But Jason didn’t miss the way the sentence also curled up into a question. 

God, this was so fucked up. The kid thought his parents meeting his basic needs was love. Like that could ever be enough.

It wasn’t even enough for the animal that they were trying to lock him into being.

“Sure, they do, rat,” Jason hissed as he pulled out a gun. 

The kid’s entire body language changed. He had been watching Jason warily before, but was mostly relaxed in his little cage. Now, his entire body was as tense as a livewire as he fearful looked between Jason and the gun. 

“Jason, what are—”

“Cover your ears, kid.”

He raised the gun to the padlock and shot. The rat yelped, scrambling back from the door as the lock snapped off. 

“Jason, what the fuck are you—”

He stuck his hand into the cage and grabbed the furry, little body inside of it. He could feel the kid’s ribcage, his tiny heart beating frantically in his chest, the press of claws as they latched on to Jason’s sleeve. Tim squawked, but thankfully didn’t bite Jason as he pulled him out of his prison.

“Are you insane?” Tim snapped, a little growl on the edge of his words. His claws were flexing into Jason’s clothes and he felt Tim trying to pull himself out of Jason’s grasp. He loosened his grip and let the linsang slip from his hold. 

The rat scrabbled up his sleeve and up onto Jason’s shoulder like the world’s furriest parrot. Jason could hear his breath in his ear and feel Tim’s long tail swishing between his shoulderblades. 

“You broke it,” Tim whined right into Jason’s ear. They both looked down at the mangled mess of Tim’s cage door. The metal was twisted from Jason’s bullet and wouldn’t even close properly anymore. “My parents are going to be so mad at me.”

“Good. They can eat shit.” 

Jason didn’t need to see Tim’s glare to feel it against his cheek. 

“I’m not sure I like this side of you,” Tim said with exasperation. “I already have an overprotective brother. I don’t need another one.”

Tim sounded like he was trying to get Jason to stop, but he didn’t pull back when Jason reached up to scratch under his chin. The little linsang leaned into the fingers, angling his face so Jason could have better access and he could hear the faintest rumbles of a purr. 

“Sure you don’t kid.” There was more affection in his voice than he realised he was letting himself feel. 

The kid was getting under his skin, slowly and surely digging his pathetic little claws into Jason’s heart. 

Jason turned, walking both of them out of the room.

“Where are we going?” 

Jason shrugged and Tim bounced with the motion. 

“Back to my apartment. We’re going to get you a meal and some actual training on how to control your shifts. I bet you didn’t get any of that therapy I told you you needed.”

Tim didn’t speak and his silence was answer enough. 

He still didn’t speak as Jason left Drake manor and went to the red motorcycle parked outside. 

“Is that true?” Tim asked, his voice small and delicately hopeful. “Can you teach me how to get stuck less?”

Jason’s heart broke a little and how much desire Tim had to do something that should come naturally to him. 

“I can’t make promises, Timbit, but… I know we can lessen the frequency and give you more control over how long the shifts stay.”

The linsang pressed against his neck as Jason seated himself on the bike. He partially zipped up his leather jacket, but left it a little open at the collar. 

“Get in, rat boy. We can’t have you flying off halfway through the trip and I don’t have any towels to wrap you like a burrito again.”

Tim hummed and carefully climbed down into the zipped jacket. His claws pricked at Jason’s skin even though he was obviously trying not to draw blood. Eventually, Tim got into the jacket and Jason felt him twist against his chest as he settled himself. 

Once secure, Tim poked his little head out of the jacket, his huge ears swivelling wildly.  

God, what would people think of Jason now? 

The terrifying Red Hood riding around with an adorable fluffy head peeking out from his jacket. 

It would definitely damage his street cred. 

He chuckled, reaching up to ruffle Tim’s spotted ears. The linsang made a gruff little snort, flicking his ears against Jason’s fingers. 

“You’re messing up my fur, Jay.” 

Jason laughed as he shoved his titular red helmet onto his head. “Like it isn’t going to be a complete mess by the end of this ride.” 

And with that, he took the rat out of Bristol and towards the living shadow of central Gotham City.

Chapter Text

Jason pulled up to an alley near his apartment building and shut off the engine. 

Once he was still, Tim immediately began squirming against Jason’s chest, his little head trying to peak out of his jacket again. The linsang had curled up under the jacket during the ride and had been a warm, fluffy ball against Jason’s sternum.

Little claws leveraged Tim up and his nose poked out from the well-worn leather.

“Are we here?”

“Yep,” answered Jason with a pop on the ‘p’. He quickly tucked his red helmet into a duffel and took off anything else that would mark the motorcycle as the Red Hood’s. When his identity was hidden away, he swung his legs off the motorcycle, and began going towards the apartment complex. It was simple, no nonsense and a good price because it was on the outskirts of the Crime Alley area. Jason had additional safehouses in Crime Alley that he frequented sometimes, but this one always ended up being his home base.

He took Tim inside and began going up stairs to his third floor apartment. 

“It’s an actual apartment,” Tim said, like he couldn’t quite believe it. 

Jason snorted and unlocked his door. “Of course it is, what were you expecting?”

Tim’s small face scrunched. “I don’t know. A lair, I guess.”

“That’s more Bruce’s speed.”

He took them both inside, unzipping the jacket so he could draw Tim out. He set the linsang down onto the floor. 

Tim’s ears swivelled on his head and he curiously looked around as he took in the new sights and sounds. 

“Go on. You can explore. I’m going to get some food because I’m sure you’re hungry.”

“Yeah,” Tim answered, though he was already distracted with inquisitively poking his nose into Jason’s things. “If you don’t mind.”

“I’ll call you when I got something ready,” Jason said as he ducked into the kitchen. 

He hummed as he began to draw a meal of leftover chicken together. It was strangely domestic and it made him pause. 

What was he doing?

He froze mid-placing chicken on a dish. 

He had tried to kill the kid only a couple of months ago. He had held the kid over open air and felt his frantic heart beating against his palm. He reveled in the stickiness of his blood and laughed as he crushed the kid’s bones and…

He had seen the kid’s terror and his acceptance of his own death and Jason had…

Jason had…

He had… enjoyed...

Oh god, he was going to be sick.

“Jason?” Tim’s voice came out of nowhere and he whipped around. The linsang was on the floor, staring up at him with his huge, blue eyes. “Are you alright?”

Guilt and revulsion rolled in his stomach and the remnants of the Pit stirred like a snake. 

He gulped, fighting to keep it all down. 

“Yeah,” he said, trying to ignore the slight break in his voice. “Yeah, I’m fine.”

Tim was still staring at him as he stuck the chicken in the microwave and waited the forty five seconds before he pulled it out again. He set the warm chicken on the bar and waited for Tim to pop his furry head up on the other side. 

But he didn’t.

He kept sitting near Jason’s feet, looking up like a patient dog.

Jason kept waiting and Tim kept sitting.

“Uh… Tim?”

The rat perked. “Yeah?”

“Are you waiting for a linen table cloth or something? Hop on up here.”

Tim’s head tilted. “I’m… allowed on the counter?”

The ugly feeling in Jason’s stomach quickly melted into fury. Those fuckers. Those absolute fuckers.

“Tim, I’m not going to force you to eat on the ground like an animal.”

“But,” Tim looked down at his legs. “Paws are disgusting.”

Paws are disgusting. 

The words stuck in Jason’s head. 

There was importance in the phrasing and the tone. Tim hadn’t said ‘My paws are dirty ’ , which was a normal concern and something they could easily remedy.

He had said ‘Paws are disgusting’ like it was an immutable fact. Like that was their quality. Like there was nothing he could do to change that. 

Tim said it in the same way he had said he deserved to be in a cage because of things he couldn’t control.

Jason tightened his head into a fist and forced himself to breathe evenly. 

Tim’s parents weren’t here and Tim wouldn’t benefit from Jason’s rage. 

“Paws aren’t disgusting,” Jason said as calmly as he could, even though his voice still held a thrum of anger.  “They can get dirty, but then we wash them.”

Tim tilted his head. “But they are disgusting,” Tim insisted. “I walk on them. They touch the ground all the time when I’m stuck. They go in my litter box.”

Jason forced himself to take another steadying breath. He didn’t let himself think of a kid being forced to use a litter box. He knew he would get too angry to be useful if he did. 

“Okay. First,” Jason said while leaning down to pick Tim up and bring him to the sink. He carefully put a tiny dab of soap on Tim’s paws and held him so he could wash them. 

“You’re allowed on any surface. There ain’t any rules about that. I grew up with Dick so I’m used to having everything scampered over.

Secondly, You’re not disgusting or whatever other word your parents used to describe you. You’re a person and you deserve not to have people acting like you’re dirty.” 

Tim stared at him like he was speaking another language.

It tore open Jason’s heart to think that he had to say this. 

Jason placed the plate of chicken in front of the linsang. “Here, it’s simple but it will fill your stomach.”

Tim didn’t speak, but he did turn to the chicken and began to eat. Jason was happy to see that he used his paws whenever he needed to.

After dinner, Jason declared it bedtime. 

Really, it was a lot earlier than Jason went to sleep, but he wasn’t sure he could take Tim casually saying something horrible one more time. 

The linsang agreed and let Jason put him back in shoulders. 

Tim silently watched as Jason went into his room and began to arrange pillows into a loose nest shape in the middle of the bed. 

“Where are you going to sleep?” Tim asked as Jason neared completion of the nest. 

“Here,” he said, adding his favourite blanket (the Wonder Woman printed one) to the top. 

The linsang jumped from his shoulder to the bed. He carefully poked at the pillows, kneading the soft bedding with his paws. He really did look like a cat-rat-thing as he "made muffins" into Jason's blankets.

“It's a bit small isn’t it?”

Jason shrugged. “For a human, yeah, but my shift should be fine.”

The linsang froze mid-knead. His head shot up, and something bright and happy glinted in his eyes.

“You’re a shifter too?” Tim said, a childish excitement bleeding into his voice.

Jason tilted his head. He had kept a lot of secrets, but being a shifter was never one of them. It wasn’t something he was ashamed about or anything he tried to hide. It wasn't something he really flaunted either, just cause he wasn't anything exotic.

He wasn’t like Dick who got special gliding skills when he shifted. He guessed he could climb trees pretty okay, but loads of animals could do that and it wasn’t much use in the concrete jungle of Gotham City. Fishers were sort of boring as far as animals went and being human was just easier most of the time. 

“Bruce never told you?”

Tim’s ears dipped on his head and his eyes skittered to the side. “Bruce didn’t tell me anything about you. He… he doesn’t like to talk about you.”

Wow. That hurt a lot more than he expected it to. Bruce didn’t even talk about him anymore. Jason was erased from life and conversation in one fell swoop.

How long had it taken for Bruce to stop remembering Jason… 

How quickly had he stopped...

Jason shook his head, trying not to think of his father and his memory and being dead. He took everything and shoved it into that Bat-shaped black box that he never wanted to touch. 

One day he would have to, but today wasn’t that day. 

“I’m a shifter,” Jason said, coming up to the bed. He leveraged himself on the edge. Tim bounced slightly with the action and shuffled his feet for balance. “Here I’ll show you.”

Jason reached for his dual soul, two at once, both and none, and he shifted. Bones changed under his skin, parts shrunk and lengthened painlessly, he fell into his fur like it was a warm blanket. 

When he opened his eyes the room and Tim were bigger. 

The linsang was practically vibrating with excitement. 

“You’re like me!” he chirped as he cautiously stepped forward to sniff at Jason. His pink nose twitched and his eyes practically sparkled with his curiosity. Those two huge ears on his head were perked forward and zeroed in on him.

“Well, I wouldn’t say I’m exactly like you,” Jason deadpanned, letting Tim continue to keep sniffing him curiously. His whiskers tickled over Jason’s fur. “No one will ever mistake me for a rat.”

Tim frowned. “No one has ever mistaken me for a rat except for you, Jason.”

“That’s because you are one.”

Tim sighed and just kept circling Jason. Jason kept his head held high and folded his legs underneath him. “So… what are you exactly? An otter?” 

“Nope, but close. A lotta people guess an otter. I’m a fisher.”

“A fisher,” Tim repeated with something close to awe. He cautiously came even closer and tested a small nuzzle into Jason’s side. “I would have guessed a wolf.”

Jason laughed and nipped at the rat. “Why were you expecting a wolf?”

The linsang sprang back and Jason had a distinct feeling that if Tim were human, he’d be blushing. “I don’t know. It’s, just, you were Robin and that’s cool. Wolves are cool.” 

God, the kid really was just a teenager.

“What?” Jason barked, acting intensely affronted. “Am I not cool enough for you, Timothy?”

“No!” Tim said in a rush. “No… I’m glad? It’s nice to have another shifter who’s a similar species.”

Tim settled against Jason’s side and something in Jason was very pleased to have the kit up near him.

Bruce better hope that the kid never decided to weaponise his furry little face because those huge baby blues were deadly when paired with all that golden fur. 

“I’m guessing your parents were not shifters then?”

Tim shrugged a spotted shoulder. “I don’t know? They never said they were and they never shifted around me but… my shift must have come from somewhere.”

His eyes flicked up to Jason. “What about you? Were your parents shifters?”

“Yeah, Willis is an alley cat, but my Ma she was… she was an ermine. She was beautiful and her coat would turn snow-white in the winter.”

Jason smiled at the memory. “I always wished my own coat would change colours with the seasons but that’s not part of my species.” 

Tim was silent as he leaned into Jason. “She sounds beautiful… what happened to her?”

Jason’s smile turned into a frown. “We’re valuable. Both our species have a long history with fur trafficking and it’s never died. Shifter fur has always been more sought after—it’s rarer, better kept, generally softer because we know how to shampoo it and shit—so our pelts are worth a lot.

And eventually, that became too tempting. 

Willis had a drug habit and one time when the funds got low… he sold us, me and Ma, to traffickers who gave us to furriers.

That’s where Bruce found me. I had already been sold earlier that night to a couple who teased me about how nice I was going to be as a pair of mittens for their daughter.”

Memories flashed of the couple. The way they had smiled over his cage. The way they had called him Mittens when they decided what he was good for. The way the man liked to kick his cage and sent Jason rattling inside it. The way that the woman told him about his coming CO2 poisoning and how he probably wouldn’t die; he would be unconscious until they started to skin him. 

She had been right about to tell him exactly how he was going to be skinned alive when Bruce got there and promptly punched the woman before she could.

Then, he broke open the cage, picked Jason up and carried him home. 

“He adopted me when no other survivors were found. Took me in as his own and raised me with Dick. We never found out what happened to my Ma.”

Tim was silent, but he nestled further into Jason’s side. The tiny linsang was the only thing grounding him as memories of the furriers tried to break into his head. He hadn’t thought about that time in years and actively tried to seal it away. 

“I’m sorry,” Tim whispered up. “I’m sorry that someone tried to do that to you.”

Jason shook his head. “It’s okay. It’s over now and I’m never going back there. But…” 

He looked down at Tim with his beautiful gold and spotted coat. Luxurious fur that was plush soft and didn’t have any coarse hair on it. He was small but sometimes that made people want it more. 

Any trafficker would see the value of Tim either as a pelt or as a pet. 

Jason wasn’t sure which of those things were worse. 

“You have to be careful Tim. It’s like you said, you’re like me, and that means both of us are valuable. “

Tim curled into Jason tighter and Jason could help but lick one of the kid’s ears. 

“I’m not saying this to scare you but being locked in a house also means you haven’t learned how to be a shifter outside. 

It’s our first lesson: be safe and do not let anyone you don’t trust see your shift if you’re alone.”

The linsang pulled back, his eyes blinking. “But what if I can’t control my shift? What if it just happens randomly and in the middle of a crowd and someone just picks me up and—“

The rat’s breath was hitching and Jason crooned, cutting the lid off with the soft sound. 

“We will figure it out, Tim. We’re going to get you better control of your shifts. 

But first we need sleep.” 

Jason yawned and relaxed fully on to his belly. The linsang stayed pressed against his side, whiskers twitching against Jason’s neck. 

But eventually his heart beat began to slow and he put his head down on his paws. 

“Thanks, Jason,” Tim said and Jason didn’t answer. He did smile a bit into the darkness where Tim couldn’t see. 

They woke up still in their shifts, which wasn’t surprising for Tim who would probably stay stuck for at least another week but was surprising for Jason. He had a habit of shifting in his sleep and had done it since he was young. 

His Ma used to tease him about how she would fall asleep with a little kit on her lap only to wake up when suddenly that kit became a lot bigger and a lot heavier. 

(Dick had teased him about that too. The first time he did Jason had nearly cried just because it ached so much to hear his mother’s words on someone else’s tongue. Dick hadn’t known why Jason started sniffling and had a small heart attack when he realised he nearly made Jason cry.)

He almost always woke up in a different shape than the one he fell asleep in, so it was strange to wake up and still be wearing his fur. 

He blinked, twitching his sensitive nose and flicking his ears forward. Tim was still curled up next to him, his whiskered snout tucked under his long tail. 

Jason would never admit it out loud, but the kid was almost obnoxiously cute. 

The fisher chuckled to himself as he stood. He flexed his claws into the mattress with a yawn, leaning down to stretch out his long body like a cat. His spine popped with the motion and his muscles whined as he forced them to their full length.

It had been a while since he had been a fisher for so long and he had forgotten how easy it was to settle into his fur. 

“Hey,” he said, nosing at the back of Tim’s neck. “Wake up, rat.”

Tim’s small face skewed and he cracked an eye open. “I’m not a rat.”

Jason smiled and felt his fangs press against his lips. “Could have fooled me,” he said, turning away to hop off the bed. “Come on, we got shit to do.”

He heard the linsang move, and saw a golden-furred head poke out from over the edge of the bed. 

“We do?”

Jason snorted and shifted. The change came as easy as breathing and within a couple seconds he was standing over Tim again. 

The linsang’s head swivelled with him, moving from looking down to looking up. Jason held out a hand, and the rat stood. Tim shook out his limbs before stepping into Jason’s hand. He scaled up his arm , little feet pattering along his skin before Tim put himself on Jason’s shoulder. He balanced his long body across both of Jason’s shoulders, his front half on Jason’s left with his fluffy butt on Jason’s right. The fur on Tim’s side brushed against the nape of his neck and Jason shivered with it.

Tim caught the small movement and immediately tensed. 

“Is this alright? I can change my position. Or if you have a carrier, I can go in that.”

Jason scowled at the wall on the other side of the room. This child was way too willing to put himself into a cage to be “more convenient”.

“No, you’re fine,” Jason said quickly. “No carriers. That’s just another cage and I already told you you’re never going in one of those again.”

Tim didn’t say anything, but he did feel the linsang relax and nuzzle into the side of his neck. 

Jason hummed and open his fridge door. He got out a slice of deli turkey and held it up to Tim. The rat sniffed it before delicately biting it out of his hand. 

When he was finished, he held up a blueberry. 

“Omnivore?”

“No, carnivore.” 

Jason popped the berry in his own mouth and gave Tim another slice of turkey. 

When their quick breakfast was finished, he straightened and began to put on his leather jacket. 

“You still haven’t told me where we are going,” Tim said into his ear like the annoying little rat he was.

“We are going to get you some training. I know a gal.”

Tim huffed into Jason’s ear. “Well that doesn’t seem ominous at all. Who is this gal?”

On the last sentence, Tim dropped his tone, mimicking Jason’s rolling Crime Alley accent.

Sanctimonious little rodent. 

He bounced his shoulder making Tim squeak with it. 

“Just for that I’m not telling you until we get there.”

He reached the bottom of his apartment building and turned on the street. It wasn’t in a great part of town, but it was still busy on Sunday morning. 

People hustled to work, to day care, to appointments both as humans and as animals. 

A couple of the birds were flying with a small pack clasped in their talons. 

A tiger prowled down the next street over, chatting happily with another teenager. 

Jason wasn’t the only one to have someone balanced on their shoulder and they passed a woman with a ring-tailed lemur perched next to her head. 

Tim pressed close to Jason’s neck, his small claws pricking into sensitive skin. Jason would have twitched if he wasn’t already used to being scampered over from growing up with Dick. 

They were silent as they walked and Jason took turns that winded them towards Crime Alley. 

“Jason,” Tim said from next to his ear as they reached some of the worst parts of Gotham. His voice was strained with a forced calm. “Where are we going?”

Jason paused, stopping in the middle of the sidewalk. He looked at the linsang perched on his shoulder. 

Tim’s whiskers were twitching nervously and his head was swivelling to catch every single movement. His tiny heart was pounding next to his cheek and the rat pushing closer and closer to him. 

He guessed that Crime Alley was a lot more intimidating when you weighed less than a hamburger. 

He lifted a hand and pressed it to Tim’s side. He patted the linsang, shushing the little nervous whine that he gave. 

“You’re okay. We’re almost there.”

“Alright,” Tim mumbled, flush against the nape of Jason’s neck. “Just don’t put me down.”

“Of course not, Tim.” 

Something ached in Jason when he heard the request. 

Where had Tim been placed that he didn’t want to be? How many times had he wanted to be held and protected and only ended up shoved away? 

The kid shouldn’t need to beg to feel safe when he was stuck in his shift. 

Jason continued until he ducked into a small Asian market. 

Mrs. Cho looked up as he came in and gave him a familiar scowl.

“Brave of you to come back here, boy,” she snapped in Mandarin and Jason flinched. He knew she would be mad for him disappearing a bit for the last three weeks. He had been busy with dismantling a gang and hadn’t come in to play mahjong with her on Thursdays or pick up his weekly dumpling order on Tuesday.

He answered back in the same language. “I’m sorry. I was busy.”

“Too busy to leave a note? Too busy to send a message? Were you also too busy to think with your big head?” she practically growled at him and her anger was scarier than Bruce’s could hope to be. She was two feet shorter than him and definitely more terrifying that any of the criminals Jason met on a daily basis.

God forbid, she and Alfred ever meet.

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Cho,” he apologised. “I didn’t mean to make you worry.” He leaned down to give her a kiss on the cheek and she swatted at him. 

“Annoying, dumb boy,” she mumbled, but affection was sliding into the tone. “You tell me next time you go on vacation.”

Jason flashed a smile. “Of course.”

He looked towards the back of the shop and switched back to English. “Our mutual friend is here, right?”

Mrs. Cho nodded, turning away from him. “Yes, she’s here. Worried about you too.”

Internally, Jason flinched. It was never a good thing to have two scary ladies angry at him.

“Thank you, Mrs. Cho.”

She didn’t answer and Jason just hoped she wasn’t going to ‘forget’ his weekly dumplings. He really loved those soup dumplings. 

“Who was that?” Tim asked, once he was being to go up the stairs behind the shop to the apartment above. 

“Bowei Cho,” he answered shortly. “Don’t let her size fool you. She used to be one of the FBI’s best field agents in the 80’s until she found out that the government was using the intelligence she gave them to make some less savoury deals with terrorist groups. Now, she runs a black market for Gotham’s, not-Bat-approved vigilantes and keeps a tight leash on people who want to use her tech for the wrong purposes.”

“Not-Bat-approved…how many other vigilantes are there?”

Jason smiled. “There’s a few. Me, obviously. Ivy and Harley. Aunt Kate sometimes drops in. And, of course…” 

Jason trailed off as the apartment door opened.

Selina gave Jason a half-smile when she saw him and leaned against the doorframe. A cat curiously peered out from behind her legs. 

“Well,” she purred, eyes flicking up and down Jason’s body and landing on Tim’s tiny form. “Look at what the cat’s dragged in.”

Chapter Text

“Selina!” Jason practically cheered, seemingly not at all concerned that they were standing in front of one of Gotham’s most notorious Rogues. “It’s so good to see you.”

The woman gave Jason a scowl and crossed her arms over her chest.

Tim huddled against Jason’s neck, trying to figure out why the hell Jason had brought him to Catwoman.

“Jason,” she said simply, “It’s nice for you to finally show up.”

Jason made the slightest flinch. “I’m sorry. Business calls. You know how it goes.”

Her brown eyes flickered over Jason and eventually landed on Tim. She perked in interest when she saw Tim curled against Jason’s collarbone.

“Is that business you have perched on your shoulder?” Selina asked while motioning them inside. 

A shiver ran down Tim’s spine and he desperately wanted to tell Jason to turn around. He was caught in Selina’s gaze though. A rat in front of a cat. 

“He’s something like that,” Jason said, reaching a hand up to pet Tim's ears. Tim couldn’t help but lean into the palm and hide behind it a bit. The prey instincts in him told him he needed to get away, but he stayed small and protected on Jason’s shoulders.

Selina was quiet for a moment, before she waved them in.

“You might as well come in. It would be rude of me to leave you out in the cold.”

Jason moved forward, Tim helplessly coming in with him. 

He watched as the door closed behind him, locking him in with Catwoman. The familiar feeling of unease immediately set in as the door clicked behind him. It always rose up when doors shut. It didn’t matter if it was a room or a cage; they were essentially the same when he was stuck. 

Anxiety thrummed under his skin, and he flexed his claws into Jason’s jacket. His claws wouldn’t matter if Jason really wanted to yank him off and leave him here. They were pathetic against a human’s strength, but it made him feel a little better, a little bit more like he had control of where he was put. 

“So,” Selina’s voice purred as she sat in a chair. Two cats immediately came up to rub against her legs and she leaned down to stroke over their heads. “Who is the little kitten you’ve brought me today?”

Jason walked to a chair across from Selina and held out an arm, silently offering a way for Tim to climb down off his shoulder. 

Tim didn’t want to climb down, though. He wanted to stay exactly where he was, pressed close to the person he thought would protect him if he needed it and out of the Rogue’s reach.

But Jason’s actions were telling him what to do, and he didn’t get a choice in matters when he was helplessly dependent on someone else.

Slowly, he scaled down Jason’s arm, padding on to a table. He wasn’t sure about Selina’s rules of where shifters were allowed, but he hoped it was okay. The cats seemed to be allowed to jump up on counters and shelves, so maybe that meant he was too?

When Jason’s arm left, taking its thin sense of protection with it, Tim instantly felt vulnerable. He was out in the open on the table with nothing to hide behind and the prey instincts within him screamed to find cover. Everything was taller from the lower position of the table and he felt impossibly smaller on the wood. He tucked his legs under him. His tail wrapped tightly around his body, putting a small fluffy barrier between him and Catwoman. It would be useless if she wanted to hurt him, but the anxiety bubbling inside him was beginning to fill his head and he wanted any protection he could get. 

He tensed his jaw, preparing himself to bear the growing panic and try to keep himself together, but before he fully resigned himself, hands came around his body. 

Jason scooped him up and deposited him in his lap, putting Tim up against his stomach.

Immediately, the prey panic in Tim settled. Jason was a steady wall behind him, his breath rocking Tim’s body and reminding him he was there. One of his hands fell on Tim’s back and stroked along his spine, comforting him and protecting him at the same time. Jason’s other hand came up and held Tim there, though Tim didn’t dare move away.

Slowly, he let his limbs relax more and uncurled out of his tense loaf. He felt like a cat on Jason’s lap, getting petted and scratched under the chin, but it was so much better than being vulnerable on the table. 

“This is Tim,” Jason said, while playing with Tim’s tail between his fingers. “He’s a fancy rat I’m taking care of for a bit.”

“I’m not a rat,” Tim snapped back. He couldn’t wait for the day when Jason got tired of the joke. “I’m a linsang.”

Selina tilted her head. “A linsang? I’ve never heard of one of those.”

Tim met her eyes and she gave him a smile. It was soft and kind, and now that he wasn’t as fearful, he could see it for what it was. 

“I don’t think we’re very common,” Tim said in response. “I’ve never met another linsang and if it wasn’t my shift I probably wouldn’t know what they are either.” 

Jason leaned back in the chair, but kept tracing the dark splotch of fur between Tim’s shoulders.

“His parents never shifted around him,” Jason said, his voice thick with disapproval. “They could be linsangs but they made sure he’d never know.”

Tim blinked up at Jason, not entirely sure why Jason was bringing that up. 

“You’ve never seen your parents shifted?” Selina asked, her voice taking the same tone that Bruce’s did when he was talking to victims. “Then, who was there to help you with shifting?”

She was looking at him, giving him that same expression Jason did when he had found Tim in his cage. It was something like pity, but had a fierce protective anger under it. 

“No one, Miss Kyle,” he answered, nestling a bit more into Jason’s lap. “No one helped me with my shifts.”

Selina’s lips pursed and her eyes got the same protective glint Jason’s took.

“Are you stuck, sweet thing?” she murmured and couldn’t keep meeting her eyes. 

“I’m sorry. I can’t help it. I don’t want to and I’m sor—“

“Shhh, none of that,” she cut him off. “This is not your fault. You don’t have to say you’re sorry.”

“But it is my fault! I can’t stay human and I try to but I get myself stuck and…” 

Memories reared in his head. 

Him waking up trapped in fur and terrified of when his parents would come into his room to retrieve him, only to be disappointed by his form. 

Him circling in a cage he had been in for weeks, pacing around the edges of it because that was the only exercise he got and this was the only place he could go. 

Him grooming, grooming, grooming until there were bald patches in his coat in a vain attempt for his parents to stop seeing him as dirty. 

“… I don’t want to be an animal.”

Something very sad passed through Selina’s face and Jason’s hand tensed on his back. They seemed surprised that he would say that but…

Why would he think any different? 

Being a human was good and people loved him for it. Being a linsang meant being locked in cages and isolated until he could fix himself again. 

“Oh kitten,” Selina said gently. “Someone has put a lot of poison under your fur. Someone has gone a long way making sure that you hate it.“

Tim’s head whipped up, and he would have been crying if he physically could. 

“You’re not an animal, but the animal is part of you. You are a shifter. You are both and shifters are never supposed to live favouring one side so greatly over the other.”

“That’s why I want to get control of my shifts,” Tim said, his voice getting heavy. “I’m an animal all the time and I don’t want to be a linsang anymore.” 

“Learning how to control shifts isn’t about taming the animal inside you,” Selina corrected gently. “It’s about balance and loving both sides. You will never learn to control your animal if you punish it for simply existing.”

Tim was silent, not sure what to say. It was the exact opposite of everything that his parents had told him. 

They had always said that punishment was the only way to get control and that it was Tim himself that caused himself to be stuck. 

Is it possible… was it possible… that they could have been wrong?

“How can you control something if not by punishment?” he asked. Jason’s hand began petting, rhythmic strokes going from his head down to the tip of his tail. 

He was getting more pets by Jason now than he thinks he had ever had in one sitting. 

“Jason,” Selina’s voice was sharp and Jason’s head went up. “Could you shift and come here for me, kitten?”

Jason raised an eyebrow, but wordlessly stood. He put Tim down, nestling him into the corner of the chair so his back and side were protected, then shifted. 

His brother’s bulky human form melted into the sleek body of a fisher. 

Pale skin blurred into rich, reddish brown fur. His sace lengthened into a muzzle. A tail swept out behind him. He was still bigger than Tim, but much smaller than he was as a human. Yet, he didn’t hesitate to pad over to the Gotham Rogue and allow himself to be picked up. 

Jason was obviously befuddled but easily leaned into the woman’s shoulder and accepted scratches from her manicured nails. She held Jason with practiced ease, but the most amazing part was that Jason was letting himself be held. He wasn’t even trying to hold on with claws; he was just resting all his weight into her arms. 

He looked almost exactly like a large cat in her arms.

“Tim, what did you just see there?” Selina asked and Tim startled as he was being spoken to again. 

“I… umm… Jason shifted when you asked him to and came over there?”

“Yes, anything else?”

Tim replayed the scene in his head, trying to find the answer. “No, ma’am.”

“Did I have to threaten him? Tell him I was going to punish him if he didn’t listen? Use his shift against him to get what I wanted?”

“No, ma’am.”

“Then, why would Jason do that for me? Fishers are larger than linsangs but he’s still more vulnerable in his shift. I could have hurt him easier if I wanted to. I could hurt him even now, and he’s not struggling.”

No, Jason looked the exact opposite of struggling as he sighed contently into the fingers scratching under his chin.

The gears were turning in Tim’s head as he tried to relate this to his problem of being stuck in his shifts. 

“I guess because he knows you’re not going to hurt him? Because he trusts you?”

Selina nodded and walked forward, Jason still in her arms like a cat. “That’s right. He trusts that I’m not going to hurt him, so he is willing to do things when I ask him to. And if he didn’t listen, I wouldn’t hurt him either. There’s trust there and it doesn’t have anything to do with the fear of punishment.

“You have to treat your shift in the same way. It won’t listen to you if you only try to shove it away and punish all its needs and wants. Shifters need balance, and balance means giving in to your shift sometimes to balance your human side.” 

She stopped in front of the chair and gingerly placed the fisher down next to Tim. Jason shuffled down next to Tim, brushing their fur together. 

Tim expected Jason to immediately shift back to human but instead, the fisher settled and pressed them together. He seemed comfortable in his shift in a way that Tim never was, confident in his body in a way Tim never felt. 

Selina petted over Jason’s head one last time before retreating back to her seat. 

“I know you’re not going to like to hear this, Tim, but learning to control your shifts is going to require more time in your shift, but by choice.”

Tim’s stomach twisted with instinctual distaste at the thought of being smaller for more time then he necessarily needed to be.

He dipped his head. “Okay, Miss Kyle, I understand.”

“Oh baby, don’t look so sad,” Selina said with a smile that didn’t quite reach her cheeks. “You’re going to be okay and we’re going to make sure it's much better than whatever the hell your parents were putting you through. You’re not alone.”

You’re not alone.

The words stuck and sort of made Tim want to cry though he didn’t know exactly why.

You’re not alone.

Jason was warm next to him, his darker fur pressed into Tim’s spotted coat. He had never had a larger shifter curl around him before Jason. 

You’re not alone. 

Selina was soft and kind. Tim had only known her less than a day, but she was already feeling more like a mother than Janet Drake had been. Tim didn’t think she would have shoved him off her lap because he was shedding, or squeezed him tight enough so his ribs ached for days, or left him trapped for months. 

He didn’t think she would have let him get stuck in his shift in the first place. 

This is what it could have felt like. 

“Now,” Selina stood again, beginning to walk out of the room. A trail of cats followed her into was Tim assumed was the kitchen.  “Now that we’ve had this joyful talk, let’s get some lunch prepared and so I can tell Jason how much of an idiot he was for disappearing for weeks without telling anyone. Feel free to hop down, Tim dear, the cats are trained to be polite around shifters.”

Jason grumbled but stood again. He climbed off the chair and almost instantly got lost in the herd of cats. 

“You coming, pipsqueak?”

Tim jolted, but followed, scrambling down to get next to Jason. A cat sniffed curiously at his side and he leaned into his older brother. 

“It’s okay,” Jason said while nudging Tim closer with his snout. “I got ya’”

You’re not alone.

Maybe staying in his shift wouldn’t be so bad.

Dick swooped down, letting the familiar rush of gliding take him through Drake Manor. He loved his shift and the thrill it gave him. He was as light as air and as quick as the wind, able to practically fly with his delicate wings. 

Dick landed on a sconce, claws scratching against the metal, and prepared himself for his next leap. 

The Drake Manor echoed around him. 

He would have thought it was empty if he didn’t know for sure that Tim was here (he maybe kinda used some tracking on Tim’s phone to make sure his baby brother was available to be stolen away for a couple of hours). 

Dick glided, navigating the air with his tail, before plopping onto the floor of what he thought was Tim’s room. 

He wasn’t completely sure, because he hadn’t actually been in Drake Manor before. Tim had never invited him over, though he had tried to let the younger boy know he was more than open to it. He desperately wanted to be part of Tim’s life. 

Especially when…

Memories of Jason calling him a brother. Jason trying to live up to Dick’s high standards. Jason flinching back when Dick’s anger snapped. Jason falling asleep in his shift on Dick’s lap and Dick refusing to move the entire night.

He had let Jason go too easily. He hadn’t put in enough effort to make Jason feel like he belonged and failed so miserably that Jason tried to take a gamble on a new family. 

Dick wasn’t going to let that happen to Tim too. 

He was going to keep this brother.

Dick landed, shifted, and stood up to his full height. 

Tim should be here but…

He didn’t hear anything in this house. The air is stale. The halls are silent. There wasn’t a single light on. 

Tim’s parents should be home. Their flight left in two days and Tim’s phone had been in his room for hours. He guessed they could be somewhere without Tim, but why would they?

They only had a week in Gotham between their research trips and Dick imagined they wanted to spend every minute of that with Tim. 

They only got a couple of days to see their boy. Tim had been ecstatic to have his parents home and had been talking about it for days. Tim had multiple family members who came to take care of him when his parents were away, but he always got this bright gleam in his eyes when it was his parents. 

Tim had been so excited...they had to be with Tim.

Something twisted uneasily in Dick’s stomach.

They had to be with Tim, right?

He sighed and put his hand on the doorknob. 

“Tim? It’s me. Dick,” he said, cautiously pushing the door open so he didn’t startle his brother. 

“I just wanted to…”

He stopped. There was no one here. 

Dick’s eyes narrowed as he scanned the room. There was definitely not a human in here, but maybe there was a linsang? Tim could be smaller and stealthier in his shift. 

But Tim didn’t pop his furry little head out and Dick couldn’t find a lick of fur.

“Tim?” he called again. “Hey, are you alri—”

His gaze landed on a cage.

Its metal jaws were wide open, the door hanging loose, and the lock blasted to shreds. The iron was twisted and a bullet casing laid on the floor. 

No. 

Dick’s heart was in his throat as he surged forward. 

He half expected to find Tim’s corpse, already cold, already dead, already dead for days before he had known, already dead before Dick had even known that anything was wrong and that his little brother had needed him and already dead with his autopsy photos taken, already dead and Dick didn’t—

He shook his head. 

Tim wasn’t Jason. He wouldn’t let Tim be Jason. 

He could save at least one of them.

But to do so he needed to focus. 

Okay. Detective mind. Think like Bruce. 

There was a cage, a bullet, and no blood. 

Thankfully, there was also no corpse. No signs of struggle either.

Dick swept through the scene, trying to piece it together in his head. The bullet seemed to have been used to open the cage… but why?

Why would someone break in to open an empty cage?

Unless… 

Horror washed through Dick like he was being dipped into ice water. 

Unless the cage was never empty to begin with. 

He came closer, looking past the shattered lock into the cage.

There were signs of use. Of a lot of use. 

The shed of Tim’s fur was on the hard plastic ground and caught in the cage wire. A small litter box was shoved into a corner. A rodent water bottle was zip-tied to the bars.

And, most hauntingly, a track had been worn into the floor. There was a dent and it had been paced so many times that the dark colour was rubbing into white.

That wasn’t made by a boy who was occasionally put in a cage (not that that would be okay either), it required time. Hours and hours of pacing the same space, unable to go anywhere else.

Nausea rolled through Dick suddenly as his mind viciously conjured images of Tim being isolated and stuck in a cage, pacing because what the hell else was there for him to do.

But the pieces still didn’t fit together in his head.

Tim being locked in a cage didn’t tell him who would have broken into the Drake Manor in the first place.

How would someone know Tim was in a cage when Dick himself didn’t know?

How would someone else have known Tim was ever a shifter, let alone that he would be vulnerable and able to be taken?

Maybe it was traffickers? Linsangs weren’t typically a species sought for the fur trade. Jason had been far more at risk for that because his species already had an established demand, but that didn’t mean that traffickers would refuse Tim’s exotic coat. Traffickers could also just want a shifter pet too and Tim was small enough for that to be a great risk. 

But it still wasn’t quite right.

If it had been shifter traffickers, what reason would they have had to take Tim out of the cage when he was already practically gift-wrapped for them? Why take Tim out of the cage instead of just stealing the entire thing?

Dick could not think of a reason or a way to fit a narrative together. He didn’t have enough clues.

He growled and felt fury rolling through his bones. 

Whatever the reason was, it meant Tim was kidnapped again. He had just gotten the boy back from another kidnapping attempt, one that had stopped his heart and made him think that another one of his baby brothers was going to die while he was in space, and he would not tolerate another. 

He stepped away from the cage and the crime scene. Anger flickered through every inch of his body. Tim had been in a cage. Tim had been alone and vulnerable and this is what happened. 

He was supposed to be safe. His parents were supposed to keep him safe.

Cold protectiveness and vicious rage mixed together. 

He was still in his civvies, but his gait and eyes were entirely Nightwing. He prowled towards the entrance to the Drake Manor and his footsteps echoed all around him. 

First, he would find Tim. 

He would tear this entire city apart if he had to. He would rip the hands off of anyone who dared touch his baby brother and burn their operation to the ground with them still in it. 

Bruce had his rules, but Dick had his own priorities when it came to his family.

He kicked the front door of the Drake Manor open and took a cruel joy when its hinges screamed and snapped.

Then when Tim was safe back at home, he would come back.

And show the Drakes exactly how dangerous a protective big brother could be.

Chapter Text

After a couple of days from bringing home the rat, Tim and Jason fell into a routine. During the days, Jason carried Tim everywhere, doing whatever he had set for the day and mainly just accompanying him on errands. Every night, Jason would take Tim to Selina’s to help him work through some of his shift issues and get comfortable in his own skin. While Tim was at Cat-Rat daycare, Jason went out and did his… less than legal activities.

Then, he would go to pick the kid up and Jason and Selina switched the rat between them so Catwoman could also perform her less than legal activities.

“You know,” Tim said on their daily walk back to the apartment. It was just past 11pm, and the streets had mainly cleared out. It was late for most people, but for Bats the night was still young. “I’m beginning to feel like a little kid with all this passing off between my ‘parents.’”

Jason chuckled and reached up to scratch behind those overly large ears. It was sort of nice to have a little shifter riding around on him. When he was with Bruce, Dick had climbed him constantly and used Jason as his own personal valet. He grew used to a little voice whispering in his ears, the subtle brush of fluff along his neck and the flick of whiskers as a shifter spoke. 

The feel of little feet along his skin had weirded him out at first, but then…

Then it became a constant reminder that Jason wasn’t alone. 

He hadn’t even realised that he had missed it so much. 

He hadn’t realised how much he had relied on it when he was younger and how the missing weight from his shoulder directly translated into an empty hole in his heart. 

It was partially filled by Tim but… he still missed a certain, smaller but still fiercely protective weight.

“Well, I’m just lucky that Selina likes you enough to be willing to provide free animal care,” Jason said, holding Tim to his neck, and he jogged across the street.

Tim huffed, his whiskers twitching along Jason’s skin. “I could be fine on my own, Jason. You don’t have to give me to my babysitter.”

 Considering the sorry caged state of Tim when Jason found him and the amount of abandonment issues heaped on top of him… yeah no… Jason wasn’t going to be leaving Tim alone any time soon.

“Nope.” Jason took a turn towards his apartment. “No can do. Also it’s cute that you think I could force Selina to do anything.”

The building was a distant, welcome sight to his aching feet and he couldn’t wait to get inside, shift and curl around the spotted rat. “Plus, I know you like hanging out with the cats. They are like… your people.”

The linsang nipped at his ear with an affronted growl. “I am not a cat! Or a rat! I’m a linsang. Plus you look much more cat-like than I do in your shift.”

The man laughed, bouncing Tim on his shoulder. “Lies, Timothy. You speak only lies.” 

The kid huffed and changed the topic, eagerly blabbering about a museum exhibit Selina had snuck him into earlier that evening. Compared to the rat Jason had brought the first night, the kid was absolutely chirpy, talking about things he had seen and asking Jason seemingly random questions. 

Jason wondered if this was how he was naturally— a bright, inquisitive kid that stuck his nose into everything. Jason had only gotten a glimpse of that kid when they had first entered his apartment, but now it was seemingly coming out full force.

He chuckled darkly to himself.

He had seen the kid terrified, begging for his life, petrified as he stared into the open air of his death. He had seen the kid stressed and scared, fearing that he would be kidnapped and sold off as a pet. He had even seen the kid dejectedly resigned, ready to keep himself locked in a cage because he couldn’t imagine a life that didn’t involve iron bars. 

He had seen all of that, and was just now getting to see what the kid should have been this entire time.

It was hard to imagine that Jason had almost snuffed it out before he got a chance to see it.

“Jason, you need to go,” Tim said, breaking him out of his thoughts. He suddenly realised he was at a crosswalk, staring up at the little white walking signal but not walking. Tim’s small body brushed along the back of his neck and he felt a wet nose poke into his cheek. 

“Jason? Are you alright?”

Jason reached a hand up, feeling Tim’s soft fur and gently scratched the side of his head.

“Yeah, I’m okay. I just got stuck in my own head for a second.”

He walked, carrying the linsang towards his apartment building.

“That’s okay,” Tim said, snuggling down on Jason’s neck again. “Sometimes I space out too. Dick would tease me about being an astronaut because of it.”

Jason smiled, a memory of Dick balanced on his shoulder and chirping about ‘Jason being a space cadet because his head was a million miles away’ ringing through his mind.

“Yeah, he used to do that to me too. I hated it, but that just made him laugh more.”

Tim was silent as Jason walked into his apartment building and began to climb the stairs up.

Just as Jason was putting his key in the lock, the rat piped up.

“Why haven’t you tried contacting Dick?”

Jason froze, his key mid-turn, and the cat-weasel kept talking. All those light happy feelings earlier, that part of him that had thought this day was going pretty okay, dipped sharply. 

Dick. 

His big brother. He hadn’t been there for Jason either but… it was harder to be mad at Dick than it was to be mad at Bruce. Every time Jason tried to feel fury towards the man, it slipped through his fingers like water. 

Jason didn’t know how to feel about that, so he just kept shoving it to the side along with most things Bat-related.

“He still loves you, you know. He always talks about you and how much he misses you. Bruce doesn’t talk about you at all, but Dick… Dick misses you every day. He would want to know you’re alive.”

Jason sighed, and opened the door. He stepped inside, locked the door behind him before depositing the linsang on to the kitchen counter. 

Then, like he always did when he was stressed and felt that confusing mix of anger-grief-and-longing towards his family, he began to prepare a meal. 

He didn’t give a damn that it was 11pm. He needed to be doing something productive.

His hands moved almost on their own accord, plucking an onion out of the fridge and chopping it without him really consciously thinking about it. 

Tim watched silently, seemingly waiting for Jason’s answer. 

“In case you haven’t noticed Tim,” Jason said, just as he was dumping the onion into a deep pan with a pat of butter. As they began to cook down, he got out some celery and onions. “I’m still the Red Hood and still a criminal.”

Tim shook his head. “Dick won’t care. He will care more about you coming back.”

“Really?” Jason said with a lifted eyebrow. “Because I have a duffel bag full of heads and one kidnapped kid—” he poked Tim in his fluffy chest. The linsang went a bit cross-eyed to follow the finger. “—that would beg to differ.”

“I mean yeah… he might be mad about that but… I still think he would rather know his brother was alive, even with his flaws.”

Jason snorted, dumping the chopped celery and carrots in the pan with an aggressive moment.

“That’s a charitable way to think about me coming back to life in fucking pieces,” he snarled as he dumped in chicken stock and slapped a top on the pan to bring it to a boil.

Tim was silent before the damn rat began speaking again. 

“What do you mean?”

“I mean,” Jason went for raw chicken now, angrily slicing the breast and thighs into smaller pieces. “I’m fucked up Tim. I’m alive, yeah, but I’m not right. I’m not Robin. I’m not the same boy that was buried in his grave. I’m just a fucked up mess that’s made from the broken pieces of him and glued together by the damn Lazarus Pit.”

He dumped the chicken into the boiling chicken stock and stared. 

Bubbling.

Bubbling like the Pit. 

Bubbling like the fury that licked the walls of his stomach and demanded the kid’s blood even now. He didn’t want to hurt Tim and he had long stopped thinking of the rat as a replacement, but... that terrible whisper wanted to shatter the people he had once called family to broken glass pieces. 

“I’m a monster. Mary Shelley would get a kick out of me.”

“I don’t think you’re a monster,” Tim said slowly. His tiny paws with their bright pink toe beans shuffling under him. “Monsters don’t break me out of a cage or take me to therapy or make me chicken noodle soup at almost midnight.”

Tim was forgetting an important fact though. 

Jason lunged towards the rat, scooping him into one hand and clasping around his ribcage. He felt those thin bones and that small heart jump. Tim’s breath quickened and his huge ears flipped back flat against his head. 

“Yes but do monsters hang you over your death and laugh in your face because of all your pathetic begging?”

The linsang stared at him, his huge blue eyes unblinking. But then the rat took a heavy breath, steel in his eyes. 

“I’m not afraid of you Jason. I know you won’t do that again and that the Pit was messing with your head.”

He almost sounded sure, but Jason could feel the rapid beating of his heart. 

“You sure?” Jason snarled, the animal in him wanting to flash fangs even though he was still human. 

“Yes.” The rat didn’t even look away. 

They stared at each other. 

And stared. 

Jason squeezed slightly and the kid didn’t even flinch. 

…

And Jason gave in. 

He placed the linsang back down on the counter with a guff of a chuckle. 

“I can’t tell whether you’re brave or stupid,” he said returning back to the chicken noodle soup.

“I like to think I’m just a good judge of character,” Tim replied, licking down the fur Jason had ruffled. His tail tip twitched in annoyance at having his fur messed up.

“Well, that’s a fucking lie, but I’ll allow your delusions.”

He tasted the soup, and… ah, great. Almost as good as Alfred’s. 

Silently, he served it into bowls and slid one in front of the rat.

The linsang made a happy little croak before putting his paws on the bowl ledge. He balanced his top half carefully, sniffing at the steaming broth before lapping delicately at the soup. 

“You’re really not as scary as you think you are,” Tim said between gulps. 

“Really?” Jason said sceptically. 

“Yeah, and the chicken noodle soup is helping prove my point. You're like a mother…”

Tim kept speaking but Jason stopped listening. Instead he focused on the kid’s arms as he maneuvered a spoon to nudge a piece of chicken towards him. 

On the inside of his arms, were two bright pink bald spots, completely bare of fur. Jason put a hand on the spoon, stopping the linsang’s motions. 

Tim frowned and tried to push through Jason’s hand. “Hey, I want that piece of ch—“

“What’s this, Tim?” Jason said, moving his fingers to Tim’s arm and gently turning it over.

Jason held Tim’s tiny arm and stared at the pink bald spot on the inside of it. His other arm had a matching spot, two mirrored patches that lacked any fur. Sensitive pink skin that was never supposed to be uncovered was angry and red on the kid’s body.

“Tim,” he said, carefully and slowly, rubbing the fur that bordered the sensitive red patches. “What’s this?”

Allergies. Please Tim. Please say allergies. 

Tim hardly seemed to care and stayed focused on the soup. 

“It’s nothing, Jason. It’s just that when I overgroom, the fur starts to rub off.”

Jason’s heart cracked a bit, like a small knife had been slid down the middle of it. He took a deep breath.

“Tim, why do you groom so much?”

The linsang tilted his head down, humming as he looked at the bald patches. 

“Mother always said that fur was dirty and grooming helps make it less dirty,” he said, and there was a familiarity in the tone like he had told himself the line before.

Then, he gave a dry, hoarse chuckle. “My fur can’t be dirty if there’s no more fur anymore.”

The joke didn’t land and it only made Jason’s stomach churn more in revulsion. 

Tim couldn’t think that. It couldn’t possibly… but Jason knew that he did. If all of Tim’s past comments were any indicator, then he could very well believe it.

“Tim,” Jason said, his voice coming out more as a whine. He needed Tim to hear this. He needed Tim to listen. “You’re not dirty and grooming off your fur… that isn’t a solution. Please tell me that you know that overgrooming is not a normal behaviour. ”

The linsang ducked his head, self-consciously shuffling but not moving away. There was a long pause before he sighed and laid down into a loaf.

Jason decided he hated that sad little loaf, and how small it made Tim look. Almost like he was a captured zoo animal with no stimulation or hope for freedom. Like he was an animal that had given up.

“I know, Jason. I don’t want to overgroom but…” he trailed off fighting to fully form thoughts in his head. “When I was in the cage, there wasn’t much to do. I could pace, I could sleep, or I could groom. A lot of times I paced, but, well, you can only to that for so many hours until your body starts screaming at you to stop.

“Sometimes, I slept but… sleeping started to scare me. I spent so many hours sleeping and I began to lose time. I didn’t know what day it was. My circadian rhythm was completely shot. I had no idea how much longer I was scheduled to be in the cage and my mind began telling me it would be forever and no one would ever come to get me out and… I tried to stop sleeping. I couldn’t anymore because it made being in the cage feel like it was going to be forever. 

So that leaves grooming. Mother likes seeing me groomed. She likes knowing my fur is clean and that I’m taking care of it. And… it...it made me feel like I was accomplishing something. Sometimes the feeling of accomplishment felt like the only thing keeping me sane.”

Jason… how did Jason respond to that? How did Jason try to even start breaking down how wrong and fucked up that thinking was? 

He couldn’t blame Tim… not for doing a behaviour that he only did because he felt it kept him sane, but…

Tim had to know how wrong it was. He had to know that he didn’t need to hurt himself to feel productive and clean and deserving of attention. He didn’t have to choose between destructive behaviours that were tearing apart his head. 

He deserved so much more than that. How couldn’t he see that?

“It’s okay, Jason,” Tim said in a way that was supposed to assure Jason. “It’s not important.”

That was so wrong. It was so important. Why did this kid keep thinking that anything related to his health or mental stability was unimportant?

How had Dick and Bruce let it get to this point?

His fury spiked in response to the thought, racing through him like lightning. It licked its teeth and rubbed along the sides of his throat. It growled in his stomach and made him flex his hands into a fist.

Bruce never did care did he? He always seemed keen on letting his little birds fly until they were shot out of the sky.

Or until they ripped themselves into small pieces in Tim’s case.

Jason ran a hand through his hair, trying to keep a lid of his anger. It wanted an outlet. It needed an outlet. And looking at Tim’s sad, abused cat loaf was not helping.

He swallowed down a growl that wanted to slip out of his throat.

He wasn’t mad at Tim, but it was getting to the point where it didn’t matter. The Pit was eating away at his logic, caustic and acidic in his mind.

“Jason?”

Tim’s voice was echoey like he was far away. The voice of the Pit was much clearer. 

And it was whispering: hurt him. 

Jason shook his head and stomped towards the door. He needed to go. He needed to get out. He couldn’t risk hurting the linsang.

“Jason?” Tim’s voice was a bit louder and suddenly more frantic. The rat scrambled away from the bowl and trying to get down from the counter. He was pacing the edge, obviously trying to figure out whether leaping down would hurt him.

“Jason, where are you going?”

“Out,” he huffed, shoving on his jacket. He heard a small thump behind him and the clicking of claws.

“I’m sorry. Don’t go. I’ll be better.”

The rat’s words fed directly into his anger.

An abused child. Left alone. Left for dead. Left to die.

Tim’s begging was running together with the memory of his own voice, straining through the laughter of a madman. 

He needed to go, but the kid was digging his thin claws into Jason’s pant leg.

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry,” the linsang kept repeating. “Please. I’ll be better.”

The kid was panicking, but he didn’t realise that Jason was also spiralling and all his begging was just making the memories become sharper.

Jason grit his teeth, took a deep sigh, and forced himself to lean down. He picked the kid up before putting him on the couch. Tim whined at being put down, trying to cling to Jason again.

“Tim,” Jason said, fighting to keep his voice level. “I need you to let go.”

“No. Please. Please stay.”

“I can’t… my head…” He was having a hard time keep the fury from his voice. “I need to go.”

Tim looked like he wanted to fight and begin begging again but… 

Resignation broke across his face like shattered glass.

His behaviour turned on a dime, switching from a kid fighting to convince him to stay into something much smaller and more beaten.

“Okay. You can go Jason,” his voice was hollow and it reminded Jason of when he had left Tim for Dick to find. 

“But… you’ll come back right?” The linsang sounded so hesitant and Jason wanted to stay. He really did, but… 

The fury still roared and wanted something to break. 

He didn’t want that something to be his little brother’s bones.

Jason nodded. “I just need to clear my head. Give me an hour. I’ll be back.”

Tim looked at him, searching his eyes for a lie. Tim had been lied to so many times before, so many people had told him they would come back, only to leave him to grow up on his own. 

“You promise?” He said hesitantly. 

Jason forced a smile and he knew it didn’t reach his cheeks. He pet between Tim’s ears, smoothing over the stripes.

“I promise. I just need some time to myself.”

Tim didn’t look like he wanted to admit it, but eventually he gave Jason a quiet ‘okay’.

Then, as Jason left the apartment with the linsang burning a longing hole in his back, his guilt burned almost as bright as his Pit rage.

He would be back soon. 

He promised. 

Chapter Text

Gotham was quiet that night, but it did little to settle the anger rolling in Dick’s stomach. 

Dick didn’t get fiercely angry often. He got stern. He got annoyed. He even got exasperated, but his temper had cooled with age and became something much harder to draw up.

When it did rise up though…

It was cold. It was vicious. The ferocity of it, its willingness to take lives, scared even Dick sometimes. 

Which is why Dick didn’t tap into it often and was more likely to let the evils in the world roll off.

Which was hard as a vigilante/superhero, but also one of the only ways he could cope with this life. He couldn’t afford to get furious at every injustice he saw even though a part of him desperately wanted to. If he did that, his anger would eat him away until he was something different.

He didn’t want to know what the shell left of himself would look like. 

But one thing that never failed to cut into the cold well of his fury were threats to his little brothers.

Dick grit his teeth as he shifted to glide to a lower roof. Right before his smaller body hit the ground, he shifted back, landing in a clean roll and bouncing back up to his feet. 

The Red Hood had tested him long enough, gotten away with capturing Tim long enough. Dick should have broken all the bones in his body after the first time they recovered Tim. He should have snapped his spine for daring to think he could touch one of Dick’s own.

But the Hood would see what happens… he would become very, very well-acquitted with what a furious Nightwing could do. 

Dick had been tracking the Red Hood for days now and had slowly been closing on his location. He wasn’t completely sure that the Red Hood had Tim, but Dick’s suspicion was steadily growing. 

Tim had told him that Hood had beaten and kidnapped him out of the Titans Tower.

(He had also told Dick a frankly insane theory about the Red Hood being Jason Todd resurrected. It was a theory that Dick hadn’t put much thought into because it tapped into that still aching black box where he had shoved all of Jason’s memories. Jason was good. He was the best. He had deserved so much more than the world dealt him. He couldn’t be tarnished by the Red Hood’s bloody influence. Tim much have been delusional, only imagining what he wanted to see because Jason… Jason…

Dick couldn’t…)

No. 

He couldn’t think of that. 

Back to the mission.

Hood seemed to have changed his flight patterns recently. 

Up until about a week ago (approximately since Tim disappeared for a second time), the Red Hood had kept mainly to Crime Alley with some occasional ventures into the Narrows and the Bowery. Now, though, Hood was keeping towards the west side of Crime Row and seemingly starting his patrol around the Chinatown area instead. 

The change in pattern was strange but Dick didn’t think it was something to raise concern over. All the rest of the Hood’s activities had remained the same. 

Nightwing’s will to crush he into a bloody pulp on the pavement remained the same. 

Dick waited, knowing his target was coming into place. For all Nightwing’s tracking, finding the Red Hood had been a bit of a fluke that night. 

Dick had gone out mainly to search for clues on where Tim could be, he hadn’t entirely been expecting a fight.

He was more tired than he would have preferred. He had stayed up the last two nights chasing what he thought might be a shifter trafficking connection to Tim only to realise it was all for nothing. It was a syndicate they would have to deal with in the future, but they didn’t have Robin. 

The frustration was maddening. 

No Robin. 

Another little brother was missing and only one person knew where he was. 

And that person was stopping his bike, and gracefully sliding off to saunter into a seemingly abandoned building.

Nightwing narrowed his eyes but followed by slipping through a partially boarded-up window. 

When he went inside, he heard the murmur of conversation and the roll of rough voices. And then those voices descended into chaos as the Red Hood presumably crashed their party. 

He hummed to himself as he crept through the building, winding himself up into the rafters to get a bird’s eye view of the scene. 

The Red Hood was fighting, smashing his fist into goons. They looked like they had been running some kind of small drug operation and suspicious heaps of white powder were dotted on tables. 

Briefly, Dick considered calling in Batman for back-up. The goons wouldn’t be any trouble and the Red Hood was already getting through them for him, but Hood himself might be a problem.

He was trained, very well trained, and had smooth Bat-like movements that impressed Dick more than he would like to admit. The Red Hood knew how to fight and that made him dangerous, especially when Dick could already feel exhaustion running ragged through his bones. 

Briefly, he considered calling Bruce. His father would come, but…

Dick quite simply didn’t want to deal with Bruce’s judgment as he broke as many bones as his could in the Red Hood’s body. Plus, the man was running on even less sleep than Dick. He had spent countless nights breaking through shifter trafficking rings, trying desperately to find the golden spotted fur of his third son. 

But nothing had turned up. Nothing except the Red Hood’s connection to Tim’s first kidnapping and Dick’s strong suspicion that he was responsible for his second. 

And this was a golden opportunity to prove it— Hood was distracted and Nightwing could take him down with minimal injuries to force Tim’s location out of him. 

Dick smiled to himself. He could find Timmy tonight. He could bring the boy home and finally put a piece back into their little puzzle of a family. 

So, Dick pushed back the exhaustion, shifted into a sugar glider so that he had his wings, and took a leap.

Jason almost missed the sugar glider zooming into the battlefield.

At first, he thought he had imagined it, like a ghost from his past coming back in a small, furry form.

He was instantly jolted into reality when the sugar glider was smacked from the sky by a wild swing of a lead pipe.

It was a lucky shot.

The random drug dealer never should have been able to hit Nightwing like that and probably wouldn’t have been able to if he was actually trying, but…

But Dick crumpled all the same, instantly dropping like a stone.

Something in Jason snapped. Something deep and protective and witnessing one of his worst fears from another life coming true.

He roared, the flare of pit rage flickering behind his eyes, as he pounded his fists into goons until they all fell and didn’t get up again.

Then, instantly, he was on Dick, scooping the sugar glider up from the ground.

“No, no, no,” he whispered to himself, still not entirely convinced that the sugar glider even was Dick. Jason recognised that fur pattern though. Dick had always been a bright silver with stark, almost black striping. He had a Y-shaped dorsal stripe that came up from his tail before branching out onto his front legs and running the entire length of his arms, even colouring two of his small fingertips.

It was definitely Dick. He would recognise those finger stripes anywhere. 

Briefly, he considered just leaving the sugar glider. 

Dick wasn’t going to be happy when he realised that Jason was the Red Hood. He would be even less happy that he had kidnapped Tim. 

And…

Jason didn’t know whether he wanted to meet his brother again. He didn’t know if he was ready to show Dick what he had become. 

But he couldn’t leave Dick here. 

He was unconscious, vulnerable and—

Goddammit. 

He was going to have to kidnap another Bat.

“You’re back!” Tim chirped, much closer to the door than Jason had been hoping for. He wanted the kid to be distracting himself with normal things, like watching television or reading a book. Not sitting patiently by the door like a dog.

Jason sighed to himself but didn’t make a comment. He had an unconscious-and-with-a-concussion flying squirrel problem to deal with first. 

He grunted, shoving the door closed with his shoulder as Tim pranced and jabbered by his feet.

“You took longer than an hour,” Tim said, his voice a confusing mix of happy, disappointed, and relief. “But that’s alright! You came back! That’s what matters. I’m sorry for—”

“Kid,” Jason cut Tim off before he could spiral into a litany of apologies for things he shouldn’t need to apologise for. “You don’t need to say you’re sorry. I promised you an hour, and I took longer than an hour. I fucked up and I’m sorry.”

He slipped off his boots but didn’t shove off his leather jacket for fear of jostling the sugar glider closed up inside of it.

Tim, always as quick as a whip, instantly caught the deviation of habit.

“What’s wrong?” he snapped; eyes narrowed. The linsang looked seconds away from scaling Jason’s pant legs to look him over. “Are you hiding an injury?”

Jason chuckled and gently began unzipping his jacket so he could draw out his older brother from an inner pocket. He felt Tim lean his front paws up on his left leg, using Jason to balance upon his hindquarters.

“I’m not the one injured,” he explained with a rough chuckle. He curled Dick into his palm as Tim’s nose twitched furiously below. 

He leaned down to show the unconscious sugar glider to the linsang. Tim peered curiously into his palm, his ears bobbing in shock when he realised who it was.

“Dick!” he yelped, nudging the sugar glider with his nose. “He’s hurt! Wha-what happened?”

“He tried to ambush me when I was shutting down a drug house,” Jason explained, subconsciously running a thumb through his brother’s velvet grey fur. “Some goon got a lucky shot in and smacked him from the sky.”

Tim whined from the back of his throat and hoisted himself up on Jason’s arm to balance on it like a branch. His tail was whipping with his anxiety and his whiskers kept twitching like mad.

“Will he be alright?”

“Yeah,” Jason assured Tim gently. He had seen his brother bounce back from so much worse. “He’s going to have a killer headache and be stuck in his shift for two weeks to fully get rid of the concussion, but he will be right as rain again.”

Tim tilted his head. “Stuck in his shift?”

Jason furrowed his eyebrows. Didn’t Bruce teach him this in all his bat training?

“Shifters need to be careful with head injuries,” Jason explained while taking both brothers into his bedroom. “Shifting is a mental thing, that’s why our emotions greatly affect our ability to control our shifts, and it means that concussions really mess us up. If you get a concussion, you’re not supposed to shift for at least two weeks to make sure you don’t have any bad side effects.”

Jason reached the bed and put Dick down. Tim also hopped off, worrying over his older brother and constantly nudging with his nose.

“What happens if you shift with a concussion?” Tim asked, sitting but still anxiously twitching.

Jason was collecting a blanket and beginning to form a loose nest around the marsupial.

“Seizures,” he grunted, pulling a piece of the blanket over Dick. “Shifters just kinda… short-circuit and if you do it too many times and you can develop epilepsy or work yourself into permanent brain damage.”

“Oh,” Tim whispered and watched as Jason turned to rifle through his backpack. After a minute of searching, he found what he was looking for and came back to Dick.

“Yep,” Jason said, popping the ‘p’ and tilting Dick’s limp head up. He eyed the sugar glider, before taking the zip-tie and carefully winding it around Dick’s neck. “Which is why we need to make sure Dickwing here doesn’t try shifting immediately when he wakes up.”

The linsang moved inquisitively towards Jason’s hands. Jason silently rolled his eyes. That was Timmy, always poking his nose into everything.

“That’s what the zip-tie is for?”

“Yeah, it’s a trick Bruce taught me. When were younger, Dick was always smacking himself into everything and concussions are never that uncommon in our line of work. Waking up in a different place is disorienting, especially in a smaller shift, and the zip-tie helps stop that initial instinct to shift into a human.”

Then Jason chuckled, the bright wisps of a happy memory he hadn’t thought of in years coming back to him.

“We actually had this special harness for Dick because he was always acting stupid. It was like those ones that go on dogs, but just really, really small. Every time he crash-landed, Bruce would slip him into it, despite all his hissing and crabbing, until Dr. Leslie could tell us whether Dick had a concussion.

“Bruce always said that it was because he couldn’t risk Dick hurting himself, but sometimes I think Bruce just wanted to put a leash on Dick before he could glide himself into another recently cleaned window.”

Jason stood once he was sure that the zip-tie wasn’t tight enough to restrict Dick’s breathing, but still snug enough so Dick couldn’t pull it off his own head and looked down as the curled-up sugar glider.

He had seen variations of this image so many times, and even though it had been years, the sense of familiarity returned instantly.

Dick was so small like this, so easily broken, and even though he was the older brother, a fierce protectiveness rose in Jason.

How many times had Jason held Dick to his chest and laughed as the glider snuggled up on his collarbone? How many times had he curled around Dick while shifted, protecting Dick even though Jason hadn’t been that much bigger than him at that age?

He hadn’t been sure he would ever do that again.

He hadn’t even known he still had the emotions inside him to want to do that.

But, despite his fears, all the old feelings came back, just like he had never died and been turned into something ugly.

Something ugly and twisted and ready to toss an abused kid off of a building because he was too pathetic to fucking control his own anger.

Maybe he had been something worthwhile once upon a time, but those days had ended on the same day he had been thrown into bubbling, green, drowning and came out as a half-formed thing.

A wretched facsimile of the bright boy that Dick must have still had in his head.

“Come on, Tim,” he said, motioning for the linsang. The cat-weasel listened, hopping down from the bed and padding over to Jason. Jason leaned down to offer a hand, putting Tim upon his shoulders so he could walk them out of the room and away from Dick.

“Wait,” Tim said just as he was shutting the door. “Shouldn’t we stay? Make sure he doesn’t wake up and panic?”

He was right.

They should do that.

But Jason didn’t want Dick to see him and he couldn’t find the right way to put it into words for Tim.

So Jason didn’t answer.

He only brought Tim to the couch, sat down and pointedly turned on the television. He also ignored it when Tim slipped down from his shoulders and into his lap. The rat growled at him to try to get his attention, putting those little paws on his thigh and ever so slightly flexing his claws.

“Jason,” he said again, exasperation entering his voice. “I know you hear me. I think we should stay with Dick.”

Jason knew that.

Dick was bat-trained like all of them and his nerves would go haywire when he realised he was trapped in his shift in an unfamiliar place, but…

He wasn’t ready yet.

He didn’t want to break the illusion and show Dick… and show Dick… and show…

He stayed silent, forcing his eyes on the TV as images of Tim’s terrorised face and rain-slicked fur ran through his head.

And that was just the most recent terrible thing he had done.

“Jason? Jason, are you listening?” Tim’s voice was distant like he was speaking underwater.

And he didn’t answer.

Not as blood filled behind his eyes.

“Fine,” Tim said, settling on Jason’s lap in an angry loaf. “Be a stubborn idiot like that. It’s not going to backfire at all.”

Again, Tim was probably right but…

Jason still couldn’t bring himself to do anything but look at the TV as the memories of the Pit raged through his head.

Dick woke up in a strange place and pressure in his head.

He was also shifted and his paws curled into the bedding. 

Not good. 

Head injuries were never fun, but they were especially bad for shifters. Shifting was essentially a mental thing and head injuries could make the process dangerous. Shifting while having a concussion could trigger seizures and exasperate the injury. 

Which meant you were supposed to stay whatever form you got the head injury in until you were fully recovered.

That was fine when Dick got a concussion as a human, but when he had one as a sugar glider…

It became a big problem.

Or rather, a small, delicate, and incredibly vulnerable problem. 

Dick cracked an eye open, taking in his surroundings. 

He was in a heap of Wonder Woman logo-ed blankets and dim evening light filled the room. The bedroom was sparse. A simple bedframe. A utilitarian nightstand. A bursting bookshelf. It was meticulously neat and whoever owned it obviously cared about keeping everything clean.

That was probably good. Not many bad guys were neat freaks. 

There was a guff of laughter, a deep voice rolling with a chuckle. 

Good again. Laughing was typically better than screaming.

Dick relaxed a tiny bit. Maybe someone had found him after he blacked out. That would be the best-case scenario. Taken home by a nice couple, maybe given some fruit and some pets by a little kid before calling Bruce to bring him home. 

“Alright, I’m going to check on the flying squirrel,” said a deep voice that was strangely familiar. 

But before Dick could figure out why it was ringing bells inside his head, the door opened and streamed light into the room.

Dick blinked against the light, trying to make out details on the figure.

“Hey,” the man said, coming close to Dick. “How are you feeling?”

A nose. Eyes hidden behind a red domino mask. A white tuft of hair on his forehead.

He knew this face. He had seen it in the glow of the Batcomputer. 

Red Hood.

Instantly, Dick tried to shift and move into his stronger, bigger body but he metally slammed into a wall when he tried to expand. 

His shift stuttered to a halt and everything receded. His skin didn’t come. His spine stayed locked in quadrupled. He still had his wings. 

He froze and suddenly realised the scratchy plastic circled around his neck. 

A zip-tie.

He was caught in his shift because of a zip-tie.

“You just tried to shift didn’t you?” Red Hood snickered, something venomous rolling in his tone. “You idiot, you know you can’t shift with a concussion and I’m not willing to drag your Gotham-sized ass to a hospital.”

Dick didn’t answer but he did glare as much as a sugar glider could. “What do you want with me?” he said, trying to sound fierce but knowing exactly how harmless he looked in this body.

“I want you to stop being stupid,” Hood retorted back, hands coming forward.

Dick flinched, scrambling away from the fingers, but they only adjusted his blankets, making a tighter nest around him. 

He was so small. Hardly bigger than one of the man’s fists. If he wanted to, the Red Hood could break Dick with a snap. He could crumple Dick’s delicate body in seconds and Dick wouldn’t be able to do anything to stop him.

A finger passed over his head, and the pad of it stroked between his ears. Dick wanted it off, but didn’t dare bite the Red Hood for fear of being smacked in a wall and having his back broken.

He felt a crabbing begin to rise in his throat, a sugar glider sound for being extremely unhappy, but he swallowed it. 

Until a hand fully scooped under him. 

Dicks world rocked and he scrambled to latch onto fingers as he was lifted into the air. His stomach dropped at the sudden loss of autonomy.

He didn’t even didn’t have the ground to be security anymore. 

Hood did it casually, without fear, like he had held sugar gliders hundreds of times before.

Dick couldn’t hold back his angry, distressed sound anymore, and he started crabbing. The sound rose from his chest and came out of his throat. It sounded like a crossing between a broken squeaker or the revving of a toy car and Dick knew it was thoroughly unintimidating. 

But sugar gliders weren’t exactly known for scary sounds and it was all Dick had.

Unfortunately, it just made Red Hood laugh as he held Dick.

“God, it’s been a while since I’ve heard that sound,” the man chuckled, tilting his head and forcing Dick to crawl if he didn’t want to be dropped at an awkward angle he couldn’t glide from.

“What are you doing?” A familiar voice said from another room over. “Isn’t that his ‘I’m scared’ noise?”

Tim. 

Dick froze on Red Hood’s hands. 

The linsang didn’t sound hurt. He didn’t sound tortured or in distress. He just sounded affectionately exasperated, like when Dick teased him about his height or Bruce worried over the wrinkles in Tim’s clothes. 

Which wasn’t right because Tim had been kidnapped.

Dick glared as much as he could in his shift.

“What did you do to him?” He snarled, baring his tiny teeth. The fur on his tail was puffing because of his anger and the fur along his spine was rising. He tried flexing his claws for as much good as that would do. 

The Red Hood’s eyebrow quirked over his domino mask. 

“Why would you think I did anything?”

The Hood was teasing him. Dick was helpless, tiny, and utterly vulnerable, and Hood was teasing him about it. They both knew he couldn’t protect Tim like this, but that wouldn’t stop Dick from trying. 

Dick’s temper raced through him like lightning. He was small at the moment, but he had the same personality and his same impulsiveness. He had patience, but it had long grown thin under the Hood’s kidnappings of his little brother.

So, Dick snapped.

The sugar glider threw himself at the Red Hood with a screech, gliding into his face and digging his tiny claws into the skin of the man’s cheek.

“Fuck,” the man yelped, back-pedaling quickly and trying to wretch Dick off his face while yelling every curse he knew.

“Let go!” he bellowed, trying to work fingers under Dick’s paws. Dick was stubborn and tried his damndest to hold on and hurt the man as much as he could as a sugar glider. “Dick, let go!”

Dick did not let go. He kept crabbing and hissing and tried to bite even though the man was shaking his head too much for Dick to actually land a bite.

He hardly heard the door squeak as it was nudged open. 

He did hear Tim burst out laughing.

“Oh my god,” Tim squealed through a peal of laughter, his entire linsang body shaking with the sound. “Oh my god, I told you that you shouldn’t go in with the mask.”

Which was a confusing reaction from Tim and Dick paused his attempts at biting. 

Red Hood snarled under Dick, still trying to wretch him off, but not he realised that the man was trying to do so without hurting him. It would have been easy to yank him off if he wasn’t paying attention to Dick’s pain, and it probably would have ripped out Dick’s claws or crushed the delicate bones in his chest if he got squeezed too tightly.

“He’s like a fucking face eater,” the Hood growled, finally managing to work a finger under Dick’s claws and unhook them.

Tim sighed in exasperation. “I literally don’t understand how you thought this could go any other way.”

Dick blinked, tensed his legs, and jumped off the Hood’s face to land in front of the linsang. His balance was a bit off (he still had a head injury after all) and stumbled in the landing, but that didn’t stop him from rushing to his little brother. 

“You can’t hide anymore,” Tim said, gazing up at Hood seriously. Just like Dick, he was tiny in his shifted form, but he still seemed fierce. A spark of pride swelled in Dick’s heart. 

“Just show him already.”

Show Dick what?

He looked between the linsang and the much bigger man. The Red Hood sighed and plopped down onto the floor.

He suddenly seemed smaller... hesitant and so much more unsure. It reminded Dick of the few times Bruce had brought Jason to galas and the boy practically hid behind him the entire night before they were allowed to leave. 

“You sure?” he said and Tim rolled his eyes. 

How could Dick’s little brother be so comfortable next to the man that had tried to kill him and held him off a balcony?

“Yes, don’t be dramatic.”

The man sighed, then, miraculously, followed Tim’s order and peeled the domino mask from his face. 

Familiar eyes. A broken-before nose. A face that Dick had fought to remember and swore to never forget. 

Aged but… it was the same.

How had Dick been fooled by a mask and a stupid red helmet?

“Hey, Goldie.”

Jason.

Chapter Text

For the second time that night, Jason had a sugar glider flinging himself at him. Thankfully, though, this time was less adorably murderous.

“Jason? No, it can’t be… you’re…” Dick sounded close to crying even though his furry body couldn’t produce tears.

Jason sighed and leaned forward to pick the sugar glider up again. Dick crawled onto his hand willingly and stared at Jason in pure disbelief.

“Little Wing… you’re… you died.”

Jason chuckled even though it felt a bit like swallowing glass. “I did. Didn’t stick, though.”

The sugar glider blinked, his small face scrunching. “You came back?”

Jason shrugged, trying to mask his growing discomfort with this line of questioning. He didn’t know exactly why he had been brought back to life or why the universe had chosen him of all people to get a second chance. All he remembered was pain like he had never known before, falling asleep because of it, and then waking up in a coffin six feet under. 

Then, his life became blurry. There were flashes of maybe-memories before… fury. 

“But… how?” Dick pressed more, unaware that he was slowly pushing buttons.

“I don’t know, okay?” snapped Jason. “I woke up in a coffin, had my mind turned into soup, and then turned into a murder-assassin for the League. After doing Talia’s bidding for a bit, she sent me back to America.”

The sugar glider stilled, even his whiskers coming to a pause. He was obviously thinking, thoughts clicking together rapidly in his head. His head swiveled going to the discarded red domino mask.

“And then you became the Red Hood,” he said, his voice void of emotion.

“And then I became the Red Hood,” Jason confirmed and was about to speak more, but he paused.

He watched as the fur on Dick’s tail and along his spine slowly rose. 

He only had a second to dodge before he had a sugar glider flinging itself at him for the third time. Dick narrowly missed his face, but managed to land on his chest.

“Dick! No! Stop it!” He yelled, hands failing to try to get the sugar glider off! “You shouldn’t be gliding with a concussion!”

“You hurt Tim!” Dick shouted as much as he could from minuscule vocal cords. He still managed to be annoyingly loud. “You kidnapped my baby brother!”

Tiny claws dug into his collarbone and just as Jason got a hand under the rodent, Dick bit him. 

“Fucking...Dick!” Jason growled and yanked Dick off of him. The bite stung, though it didn’t really hurt, and Dick still snarled like a wolf. 

“You furry napkin,” Jason tightened his hand, just as a warning. Dick didn’t look scared in the least, though, despite the damage Jason could do. He didn’t know what about him gave away that he was threatening for show instead of threatening to hurt, but the damn sugar glider picked up on it. 

Stupid rat. Stupid, reckless, and very perceptive little flying rat.

This is why Jason hated his older brother. 

“I could squeeze ya’, you know,” he threatened, his hand still wrapped around Dick’s rib cage. “It would only take me a second until you pop.”

They glared at each other, Dick stopped his biting but still bared his pathetic teeth and Jason’s hands tightened in a way that must have been uncomfortable but not painful. 

“You’re so lucky it’s hard to be mad at you when you look like a beanie baby.”

He put Dick down and before Dick could do something stupid again, pinched the zip-tie collar hold Dick in place.

“Let go, Jason,” Dick snapped, trying to whip around to bite at Jason’s fingers, but unable to reach back fully.

“I’m not going to let go and allow you bite me again. Now, shut up and listen, because I need to have words with you about the kid’s stuck shifts.”

The glider became still and had the gall to look confused. “Tim’s what?”

“His stuck shifts.” Jason physically moved Dick by the next so that he faced Tim. The sugar glider stumbled a bit with the rough motion and made a little yelp, that definitely didn’t go right to Jason’s heart.

Tim tensed immediately as both their attentions turned to him, his cat-rat body going stiff and his ears going flat.

“Jason…” he said slowly. “It’s really not a big—“

“Don’t you dare tell me it’s not a big deal because it’s a big fucking deal.”

The linsang ducked his head and nervously, flexed his claws into the blanket under him. He seemed to be avoiding their gazes.

“Timmy,” Dick said and the gentle tone managed to draw Tim’s eyes. “What’s he talking about?”

The linsang sighed, his whole body heaving with it. “It’s nothing really… I’ve just… always had problems with controlling my shifts.”

Jason could feel the words sink into Dick and the subtle tensing of his body. “Always?” he asked and Tim nodded.

“I’ve always had some trouble, but it’s been getting worse. I tried to control them on my own but… I just can’t stay human for some reason.”

Dick tugged against Jason’s hold and Jason let him go so the sugar glider could crawl over to the linsang.

“Are you stuck right now?” Dick questioned and Jason recognised the victim tone that they both used with traumatised kids.

Tim hesitated, his eyes going between Jason and Dick. 

“I’m sorry. I’m trying to shift back but–”

“Hey,” Dick cut him off quickly. “That wasn’t a command to get you to shift. It was just a question.”

Then, slowly, Tim nodded.

Dick smiled, and even through the fur, the expression was strained. “Thank you for telling me, but… why didn’t you tell me or Bruce sooner?”

The linsang was quiet and his gaze went back to the ground. He refused to meet Dick’s eyes, almost like he believed that not looking at Dick could wish the question away.

“Tim?” Dick tried and the linsang just shook his head. 

“I just… I just didn’t think you’d care.”

“Oh Tim,” Dick whispered and reached his stubby front legs up to wrap a hug around Tim’s neck. The linsang startled but then melted into the smaller animal. “Of course, we would have cared.”

“No one has before,” Tim replied so quietly that Jason almost didn’t hear it. “No one had… until Jason.”

Then the words came rushing out of Tim all at once.

“Yes, he hurt me, but that was because of the Lazarus Pit influence, and then he bandaged my paw and said he was sorry and called you to pick me up. He’s not a bad guy anymore Dick, I promise, and, yeah, he kinda kidnapped me again, but it’s only to help me with my stuck shifts and he hasn’t hurt me at all anymore, so please don’t be mad at him because he’s just trying to help me.”

Tim huffed after his little speech, his chest heaving to refill with air. He was frozen behind the sugar glider, unsure about what Dick would say to that.

His eyes bounced nervously between Dick and Jason, and Jason himself had gone still. 

It was amazing how much someone could fear a sugar glider when the sugar glider was actually his big brother that he had once thought the world of. 

Dick turned to look back at Jason and a dozen different emotions passed over his face. 

There was silence as Dick considered and neither Tim nor Jason breathed.

Then, suddenly, Dick seemed to make a decision and his expression settled.

“I suppose I should thank you, Jay,” he said slowly. “Thank you for helping Tim, though please next time, don’t include the dramatics or the kidnapping. I am very protective of my little brothers.”

It was half a threat but also…

Half something else too. 

Dick had said ‘ brothers’ , plural, meaning he counted Jason in that total. 

Jason knew Dick too well to think he was completely forgiven but… at least it was a step towards it. 

Which was more than Jason ever thought he would get. 

“Well this was all nice and shit,” Jason said, quickly diverting the conversation before he had to mention his feelings or Dick said something that would really crack his heart open. It was an obvious tactic, but he felt a little too close to crying to finesse it into something smoother. “But in case you haven’t noticed it’s 3:30 am and I’m going back to bed.”

By sheer habit (it was amazing just how quickly he had gotten used to having the rat in his life), he put an arm down for Tim to climb onto.

The linsang hesitated, looking back to Dick. 

“We’re not leaving him again, are we?” 

The cat-weasel stared up at him, blue eyes sparkling and lower lip shaking a bit. His big ears were back and his elongated body was all bunched up. He was dangerously cute, even to a hardened criminal like Jason. 

And the rat knew it.

“Yes, we are leaving him. He’s a menace to society and he knows it.”

“But Jason…” Tim said with a whine and he scurried over. He stood on his back legs, putting his tiny paws against Jason’s pant leg. Those baby eyes seemed somehow bigger up close. “...he will be lonely.”

Jason’s willpower was crumbling though he tried to fight it. 

His eyes skittered to the sugar glider, only to find another insanely cute animal giving him very obvious puppy eyes. It turns out that death hadn’t done anything to help with his weakness against small animal eyes.

“He’s right,” Dick said, twisting his body to face Jason. “I will be lonely. I’ll bark all night if I don’t have someone to cuddle with.”

Jason glared at his very small, older brother. He remembered those sugar glider barks. They were a cross between a puppy yip and a squeaky toy, and entirely unintimidating. Dick could make them sound quite sad, though, especially because Jason knew gliders were colony animals and Dick always felt uncomfortable sleeping alone.

“Fine,” Jason ground out through his teeth. “The flying rat can sleep with us.”

He ignored both Dick and Tim’s cheers and reached down again.

“But it’s only because I don’t want Dick’s damn squeaks keeping me up all night.”

The sugar glider hummed, climbing up his sleeve and nuzzling in his neck. “Sure, Little Wing. That’s the only reason.”

“Of course, it is,” Jason argued, already heading to bed. “Do you know how annoying you can be? It’s insufferable and I…”

Jason kept arguing, even though all his actions betrayed him and neither Tim nor Dick seemed to be listening to him. 

He tried not to think of it too much.

The next morning, Jason woke up smaller (which meant he had shifted in his sleep) and with his nose buried into sugar glider fur. 

The smell and feel of it were instantly nostalgic, and he couldn’t count how many times he had woken up like this. Granted, he had been much smaller and Dick had been able to curl around the front half of his body instead of just his head. But, despite the differences, it drew up all those feelings Jason tried to hide in the black box of his heart.

The human hand stroking his back was new, though, and if Dick was still a sugar glider and Jason was still a fisher that only left…

Jason raised his head, ignoring the sleepy grumble from Dick, and looked up to find Tim scrolling through his phone. He was entirely human, just like the kid Jason had first attacked in the Titans Tower, just like the kid that he’d seen Dick effortlessly trust during patrol.

This was the first time Jason had seen the kid looking this relaxed up close. He had seen the kid terrified, fear written through his human features, and far away glimpses of him when he wore the Robin cape. Jason had never seen him look so… normal. 

He really was just a kid.

Not the mythical, fury-inducing, figure that Jason had made up in his head and convinced himself had replaced him.

Tim huffed, shaking his head to try to get some of his hair out of his eyes, which didn’t work because it fell right back into place. He sighed and glanced at Jason before looking back to his phone.

Then, the kid did an obvious double-take, and startled, his hand flinching back. 

“I’m sorry if I bothered you…” he stuttered instantly. “I didn’t realise I was petting—“

“It’s fine,” Jason cut him off. He rolled his body into a stretch. “You can pet me. I don’t mind.”

“He loves it actually,” Dick said through a yawn. “He always used to be on Bruce’s lap. Just a puddle of happy cat, always wanting to get more—“

“Shut up, Dick,” he hissed to the glider and quickly turned to face Tim again. “The flying squirrel is obviously delusional. The concussion is worse than we thought.”

The kid took a second before giving them a shy smile.

“I am not delusional. You’re just in denial,” Dick grumbled and he tensed, his back legs bending like he was going to jump. 

Jason acted fast, putting a paw on Dick’s tail just as he launched and making the glider jerk back to the ground.

“Hey!”

“No gliding when you have a fresh concussion. Need I remind you to you got smacked like the world’s tiniest, most pathetic pinata yesterday. ” Jason reiterated, leveling Dick with a hard look. “How have you literally not gotten any smarter about this?”

“I forget, okay?” Dick whined, trying to tug his tail out from under Jason’s paw. “Flying everywhere is like my primary mode of transportation.”

Jason kept giving Dick a dry look and suddenly lifting his paw and letting Dick bowl back. 

“Ass,” Dick barked.

“Dick,” Jason replied, immediately grooming his paw like it was contaminated.

“You’ve gotten meaner.”

“Well, that’s what happens when you die,” said Jason, looking down and readying himself to counter whatever Dick was going to say back.

But instead of bantering, Dick stayed silent. 

When Jason looked up, he found a haunted, nearly broken look on the sugar glider’s face.

“Little Wing…” Dick said and something about it was painful. Jason couldn’t decide whether it was painful to him or to his brother.

And before Dick could say anything else, Jason whipped around to face Tim.

“Breakfast,” he says suddenly and almost desperately. “Let’s go have breakfast.”

Tim quietly looked between Jason and Tim, before nodding. He sat up and gently picked up Dick to put him on his shoulder. 

“Yeah, I’m starving,” Tim said, following Jason’s silent direction. He stood up from the bed, hesitating as he looked at Jason.

“Do you want…”

“Yes, Tim,” Jason said gently. “You can pick me up. It’s fine. I don’t mind.”

In truth, Jason didn’t love being held. He had been held by people who only wanted to hurt him to be completely comfortable with it. He’d gotten used to being hoisted up by Dick or cradled by Bruce or Alfred, but outside of those three people, the sensation still put him a bit on edge. 

He didn’t let that show to Tim, though. 

The kid was already so careful and hesitant about every motion he made. Tim was so anxious about anything to do with shifts and one wrong move from Jason could break the trust he had been working to build. 

Plus, he wanted to be okay with Tim holding him. He wanted the kid to feel comfortable with Jason in his arms and with petting the Fisher when he felt like it. 

He wanted this kid to have all the family privileges because Tim was certainly beginning to feel like family.

So, Jason forced himself to go limp in Tim’s arms and swallowed down any nervous whines. 

Luckily, the kid’s arm was solid under Jason and he curled the Fisher Cat protectively into his chest. Tim had been held enough times to know how to make a shifter feel safe in a hold. The security helped ease the tingle of Jason’s nerves. 

He sighed and met Dick’s gaze.

Unlike Tim, the sugar glider knew about Jason’s discomfort with being held, but thankfully, didn’t comment.

“Go to the kitchen, Tim,” Jason said, motioning with a paw. “We need to get a quick brunch, and then start heading to Selina’s for your afternoon appointment.”

Dick’s head perked. “Selina… as in Catwoman? That’s who you have been hiding out with Jay?”

Jason shrugged as much as he could in this form. “Yep. I’ve been co-parenting a little baby bird with her to help with Tim’s stuck shifts. We’re lucky that she seems to like stretched-out rats almost as much as cats.”

Dick laughed and they both ignored Tim’s slightly offended ‘hey’ and his small speech about not being a rat.

It was probably one of the best mornings Jason had since being brought back to life.

Two hours later, and they were at Selina’s door. 

Jason had shifted back to human after Tim had nearly burned down his kitchen in an attempt at breakfast and stayed that way to usher them out the door. Dick had been transferred over to his shoulder and the sugar glider was settled on Jason with his tail curled around his neck.

Tim knocked and they waited for Selina to open the door. 

“Aunt Selina!” Dick chirped happily and, before Jason could stop him, he glided over to the woman. 

“Dick!” Jason barked. “What did we say about gliding while you have a concussion?”

The sugar glider ignored him in favour of being held by Selina and getting under-the-chin scratches.

Next to Tim, Jason mumbled something about needing a leash for the sugar glider.

“Hello Dick,” Selina chuckled while stroking down the glider’s back. “It’s been years and I would say to look at how much you’ve grown, but you were quite a bit bigger last time I saw you.”

“Wait,” Tim said, stepping from around Jason. “You two know each other?”

Selina looked at Tim in suspicion, pausing with her lips pursed, before recognition hit. 

“Oh, it seems that one kitten did have a growth spurt.”

Tim instantly shied, suddenly a bit more insecure. “I shifted back last night, Miss Selina. I hope that’s alright.”

“Of course, Timothy,” she assured him, moving the sugar glider to her shoulder. “Come now and stop standing in my hallway. I have perfectly good couches.” 

She motioned them further into the apartment and shooed some cats off her furniture so they could sit.

“Jason, would you be a dear and make some tea for us. I know you know where everything is.”

Jason agreed and lumbered off into the direction of the kitchen. Selina relaxed on the cushions, still idly petting Dick.

“To answer your first question, Tim, I’ve actually known both of your brothers for most of their lives. Bruce and I used to be quite infatuated with each other and I was a familiar figure around the Wayne Manor.” 

Tim blinked and tilted his head. No wonder the sugar glider looked so comfortable laying in the woman’s arms and Jason had come here after he came back to Gotham. If Selina had known them for as long as she said she did, then she would be a natural safe haven for them.

All the information raised another set of questions in his head. 

“But if you were so familiar with the family…” Tim trailed off for a second, nervously worrying his fingers. “Then why didn’t I meet you until now?”

Selina’s smile fell incrementally and Tim watched it become something sadder. 

“Well, kitten, unfortunately, something hap–”

“I died.”

They all started and Tim’s head whipped to look back behind him at Jason standing in the doorway. The large man was balancing three mugs, a saucer, and a teapot, which somehow fit him. He came further into the living room, delicately placing the mugs and saucer in front of them.

He began pouring the tea and Tim was distinctly reminded of Alfred.

“That’s what happened, wasn’t it?” Jason said, his voice containing no emotions. He sat and picked up his own mug. “I died and everything changed.”

Silently, Dick got off of Selina’s lap so he could climb into Jason’s. Jason didn’t move to pet his big brother, but also didn’t shove him off. 

“Yes,” Selina said finally. She took a mug but didn’t drink from it. “Jason died and Bruce… fell apart. I loved Bruce, but he was a father who was grieving his son. There was a piece of him that was missing and I couldn’t fill no matter how hard I tried.”

“Bruce pushed a lot of people away,” Dick said from Jason’s lap. The sugar glider was huddled and Jason was idly playing with his tail. The human was gently running his hand down it only pausing when the shifter instinctively curled his tail around the fingers. “His heart was broken and he didn’t start acting like himself again until…”

The sugar glider turned to prop his chin on Jason’s leg.

“... until you came along, Tim.”

Tim blinked and couldn’t help but stare. Both Selina and Dick were looking at him and Jason was looking away, obviously uncomfortable.

Tim didn’t feel much more comfortable. The weight of his introduction into the batfamily weighed heavier than it ever did. He didn’t think he ‘fixed’ Bruce. 

Bruce obviously still missed Jason and Tim was sure that if the man had to choose between them, he would choose Jason every time. 

Tim just… he wasn’t Jason. They didn’t act the same. They didn’t sound the same. They might have had a similar shift, but Tim’s animal was delicate and breakable compared to the much larger Fisher Cat. 

He wasn’t what Bruce really wanted.

Bruce forgot sometimes, especially during Tim’s earliest days as Robin. He would see Tim’s flickering familiar colours, turn to him with a smile, and then realised… 

His face would fall even though he tried not to show it, and his body would scrunch in slightly, losing some of its bigness, and Tim would be standing there, an incorrect ghost of a boy he never was.

What did he say to that? It wasn’t a weight he wanted to bear. No matter how fun being Robin was (no matter how much it became the only thing keeping him going at times), he would have given that up if it meant Jason never died.

He tried to tell himself that at least.

He tried to convince himself that he would give this all up—freedom, brothers, family … that he wasn’t clinging on to this as much as he could for his own self-interests. 

Because… he might have to give this up now that Jason was back and growing ever closer to come back home. 

He was silent as he stared down at his tea.

“Don’t be bashful, Timmy,” Dick said, still on Jason’s lap. “You should be proud. You’ve done something I would have thought was impossible. You brought Bruce back and now… now you’ve brought Jason back to us too.”

The words were meant to be reassuring, but it was still a tiny knife straight into the part of Tim that suspected once Jason came back to the family, there wouldn’t be any room left for Tim. 

It was always like that. Tim was broken. He was problematic. He took too much effort and space despite his small shift. 

Once Bruce had Jason back and realised that Tim wasn’t worth the time, then Tim would be sent back to his real family. 

And his cage. 

But maybe not… Jason and Selina were teaching him to control his shifts after all and maybe if he learned how to full control them before Bruce sent him back to Drake Manor.

A plan crystallised in his head.

It would take deft timing but he could make it work. He just needed to make sure he could control his shifts before Jason made up with Bruce and he went back home.

Then things would be perfect. Bruce and Dick would have Jason back and Tim could avoid getting put in his cage and his parents would be so proud.

Maybe they would be proud enough to stay. 

It was a good plan.

So why did his heart hurt just by thinking about it?

Tim forced a smile onto his face and met Dick’s eyes.

“I am happy,” he said, even though the words were stilted and tasted like ash on his tongue. “I’m happy that I helped bring your family closer together.”

Chapter Text

I’m happy that I’ve helped bring your family together. 

The sentence echoed in Jason’s head along with the wrongness of that “your”. It was an exclusive word, one that put Jason in and left Tim out. It described a family that Tim didn’t think he belonged into, though the thought of Tim not belonging felt like a hand stroking Jason’s fur in the wrong direction.

Dick could feel it too. The sugar glider had gone tense in between Jason’s hands and poked his head through Jason’s fingers to look at Tim. His small ears flicked back in displeasure, tail twitching erratically against his skin. 

But before Jason could correct the kid, Tim was already speaking again, swiftly changing the subject.

“Miss Selina, what do you suggest I do to help gain better control of my shifts now that I’m human?”

Tim purposefully looked away from Jason and Dick, focusing instead on Selina. She also didn’t miss the tense change of subject, and her eyes darted between all the shifters

Her eyes settled on Jason, a question in the gaze, and he gave a tiny shrug.

“Timothy, I think perhaps…”

“Please,” Tim said, cutting her off. Tim was smiling politely, but it was a gala smile, similar to the one Bruce put on when he was uncomfortable, but bearing it.

The woman wavered and eventually, she sighed.

“You’re not going to like what I’m going to say.”

A tiny crack started to splinter through Tim’s smile. “Oh?”

“You should shift into your other form willingly.”

His smile completely fell and Jason could almost hear it shattering on the floor. “What?”

Selina leaned back in her seat and her fingers thrummed on the upholstery. “Remember what I said to you in our first meeting, Timothy. The reason that you get stuck is because you’re trying to force your body into being one, when you’re actually two. Your stubbornness to stay human will inevitably trigger a stuck shift if you do not willingly transfer between your forms.”

Tim was silent staring down at the cup between his hands. Then, he laughed and it was a harsh, ugly sound.

“I just got my thumbs back,” he said and the tone in his voice was bitter. “I should really stop getting used to them so easily.”

“Tim,” Jason cut in before Tim could say something else horrible. “This isn’t a punishment. We also aren’t forcing you to shift back. It’s just something Selina is suggesting.”

“Doesn’t it matter though?” Tim barked back, his eyes narrowed as he stared down into his tea. “My body is eventually going to make the choice for me and we all know which form it’s going to choose.”

He stood, putting the teacup onto the table, and stomped around the small room. “What’s the use trying to get me human if I just need to turn into a linsang again? I spend weeks upon weeks in my furry body, why can’t I get to be human for more than a couple hours!”

Dick jumped from Jason’s hand, landing on the coffee table to eventually hopping onto the floor. If the man was human, Jason was sure that he would be scooping their youngest brother up into a hug.  

“Tim, please, sit back down,” Dick pleading, chasing after Tim’s feet and trying to catch the edge of his pant with his tiny sugar glider paws. It would have been funny if Dick didn’t look so genuinely distressed and Tim didn’t look about ten seconds away from kicking Dick like a furry football. 

Tim glared down at him. “No.”

“Tim, be reasonable. This isn’t like you!” Dick cried and Jason saw the exact moment that those words landed about as well as a plane doing a crashlanding. 

Tim froze, his eyes becoming dangerous, narrow slits and his entire demeanour became frigid.

“It isn’t like me, huh?” Tim repeated, a cold and chilling anger underlying the words. “What isn’t like me Dick? Is it like me to just accept whatever shape I’m in? Is it like me to not get a say in the matter? Is it like me to just be whatever convenient shape pleases everyone else?”

“No!” Dick scrambled, trying to crawl up Tim’s pant leg, but he shook him off. “That isn’t what I mean. I’m just saying that–”

“That I’m not convenient anymore? That I’m not the right shape? Because that’s what everyone thinks isn’t it? I’m never the right shape and I don’t get a say in it,” Tim hissed, physically moving away from Dick and leaving the sugar glider standing in the middle of the living by himself. Jason and Selina were still both sitting silently, letting the scene play out. Tim glared at both of them, his eyes bouncing between them.

“Do you two have something say?” he snapped, body tense like he was expecting to get hit. “Either one of you want to tell me about how I don’t get to be a person for a little while.”

Selina spoke first. She was braver than him.

“You are always a person, Tim,” she said calmly, not rising to the righteous fury of the teenager. “It doesn’t matter whether you are wearing our fur or your skin. You are always a person. I am suggesting what I believe to be the healthiest route for you. It is still your choice to make a decision on whether to heed my advice.”

Tim glared, silent, angry, and frustrated by the facts that were facing him. Jason could see the battle behind his eyes. The parts of him that were at war on whether to calm down and listen or whether to let his anger run its course. 

But Jason knew about anger. He knew how to recognize the kind that all-consumed you. 

“Fine,” he stated, rearing his head and holding it up high. His chin was up. His body was all tense lines. He surveyed his world with aristocratic regard that Jason recognized from all of Bruce’s charity galas. The expression was all Gotham elite – hard edges, impervious countenance, a shield to cover up what was surely the hurricane of feelings inside.

“I’m leaving,” he said, pacing towards the door and not looking back. Dick tried to follow, but Jason caught him mid-scamper, keeping the sugar glider from rushing out the door with Tim.

“Don’t follow.”

And with that, Tim was gone and the only thing left of him was the even pattern of his steps going down the stairs.

All of them sat in silence until Dick rounded on Jason, squirming in his hands. “Let go! I could have stopped him! I could have kept him from–”

“Don’t blame this on yourself, Dickie,” Jason cut him off, setting him down on a pillow next to him. “Tim’s just frustrated. He needs to blow off some steam. He has every right to be frustrated and we just gotta let him get through that.”

“But we should be there!” Dick shot back, his tail twitching in annoyance and his thin claws pressing into Jason’s pantlegs. “We can’t just let him do this on his own! He needs us.”

“And he won’t,” Jason countered, his voice quiet but firm. “We will go get him, but it’s just right now he doesn’t need us crowding around him while he grapples with the hard truth of his situation. If we tried to keep him here, he would have just felt caged and cornered and I refuse to make him feel like that anymore.”

Jason couldn’t get the image of Tim, curled up and caged in his head. He had been trapped. He had been trapped in many ways and Jason didn’t want to trap him into this too. If Tim wanted to leave to grapple with his own feelings, then Jason would let him do that. 

Tim needed to have that choice.

All at once, Dick seemed to come to the same realisation because Dick seemed to deflate, flattening onto his pillow. He became a small ball, staring at the door like he could bring Tim back through his gaze alone. 

“I just hate the thought of him being alone and hurt out there. Especially because… especially because if his emotions are so volatile and he’s as prone to stuck shifts as you say he is… it’s just a ticking time bomb until his own body forces the shift.”

Jason sighed, and shifted himself, letting his fur come back and his spine lengthen. The world warped around him and he found himself on the same pillow as Dick, able to curl around his sugar glider brother. Dick instinctively seemed to relax back into Jason’s fur, sinking into his much thicker coat. 

“I know, which is why we will go get him in a bit. He won’t stray far. He just needs some time.”

Dick didn’t answer, but he did nestle in closer and they both sat together to wait out Tim’s anger. 

*****

What did Selina know? Tim growled to himself, kicking at a random empty bottle. The bottle made a satisfying thump against the alley’s brick wall, but it did little to quell Tim’s fury. 

He was so done. 

He was done with being a shifter. 

He was done with have a stupid animal twisting inside him, trying to push out of him even now. 

He was done with being small and pathetic and unable to open doors by him-fuckin’-self.

He wanted his thumbs. His over five feet of height. His… he wanted his human body without constantly being asked to give it away. 

He just wanted… he wanted…

His stomach burned and suddenly he felt like he was going to throw up. He made a whiny, hurt sound in the back of his throat, wiping away the tears that prickled at the corners of his eyes. His back hit the alleyway wall and he slid down it, rough brick scraping at the bottom of his spine. 

He landed on the ground with a quiet thump and he couldn’t hold the tears back. 

He started crying in that alley. 

Tears came and he couldn’t keep them back. The anger he had felt earlier had hardened into something more bitter.

God, he was pathetic.

He had a tantrum in front of his allies and now he was sitting in an alleyway crying about it. 

He wasn’t even surprised when he felt his body twinge, his limbs shake, and his form to give way to fur and paws.

He sighed and curled his tail around his feet. 

Now he was just a rat sitting in an alleyway.

He sighed again, rising to feet and staring out at the busy street passing in front of him. People and animal feet were passing in front of him and they all bustled by in a Gotham rush. The streets were intimidating to a human but as a small animal with less than a foot of height, the street looked like a sea of ever-moving legs. 

Damn, he really should have pulled his phone out of his pocket and kept it from shifting with the rest of his clothes. 

“Hello, dear,” said a warm voice from his side. When he looked up, he saw a woman had stopped near him, her hand clasped together with a little girl who was probably her daughter. “I’m sorry to bother you, but I noticed that you looked a bit lost. Would you like us to call someone for you?”

Maybe he wasn’t so lucky after all.

*****

Out of all the ways that Jason thought Tim was going to contact him for a pick-up, being called by a nice sounding lady about his ‘little lost weasel brother’ wasn’t towards the top of the list.

“Your brother is here with my daughter,” said the woman, guiding him through her quaint Gotham apartment. “She’s not a shifter herself, but she loves animals and was really good with him. I said he didn’t mind, and Lexi can be rather enthusiastic about meeting shifter friends.”

They came to a door that bore the name “Lexi” in glitter glue and construction paper.  The sheer amount of sparkles that the little girl had managed to put on the paper got a smile out of Jason.

The woman opened the door and revealed an obnoxiously pink room with a princess-styled everything. Clothes, baby dolls, and books were strewn everywhere and it was the type of complete, joyful chaos that only kids managed to produce.

In the middle of the chaos, with a plastic crown on his perched precariously on his forehead, was Tim.

The linsang was effectively trapped because he had been placed on a purple kiddie chair and was wearing what probably was a doll’s full-length princess dress. His back paws had even managed to be forced into a tiny, rubber pair of shoes. The girl was holding one of his small paws, her face fixed into fierce concentration so his claws could be painted bright pink.

“Lexi,” he said his voice in a forced politeness. “This really isn’t necessary. It’s a pretty colour but–”

“Shh, you’re distracting me,” the girl commanded, even sterner than Batman. Tim gave up immediately with a resigned sigh.

On Jason’s shoulder, Dick snickered and Jason couldn’t help but chuckle himself.

Both the girl and the linsang’s heads whipped up to look at him. 

“Jason!” Tim sighed in relief as the girl got a look of absolute joy on his face.

“Squirrely!”

She immediately abandoned the linsang in favour of running towards Jason to look at the latest animal companion. Dick had stopped snickering and instead was curiously tilting his head at the girl, whiskers twitching. “Can I hold her?”

Jason laughed, leaning down and holding out a hand in case Dick wanted to get closer. “I’m sorry, you can’t because Mr. Squirrel is hurt, but I’m sure he would let you pet him.”

“Yes,” Dick chirped happily. “Mr. Squirrel would love to get some nice head pets.”

Dick, always eager to interact with kids, did climb down Jason’s arm and eagerly received the little girl’s careful scratches behind his ear.

“Jason,” Tim’s voice came, hushed and urgent. He looked over to the linsang, still balanced on the plastic kiddie chair. The linsang very obviously mouthed  ‘please help me’ while trying to figure out a way to jump down while wearing a dress. 

Jason smiled and Tim’s expression went horrified.

“Lexi,” he practically sang. “I think Miss Weasel over there is starting to feel sad that her manicure isn’t being finished.”

The little girl was like a shark that smelled blood. She whipped around and Tim froze caught in the act of trying to escape. If he had been human, his face would have paled in dread. 

“Princess Kitty-Kat! You cannot be moving around while your nails are still wet!” 

The girl rushed over, rearranging Tim back onto the chair while Tim snuck in absolutely venomous looks towards Jason and Dick. Jason had a feeling neither of them looked very sympathetic to his plight.

Jason loped into the room and sat cross-legged next to Tim in his chair as Lexi took his paw to finish up painting his nails. Tim was grumpy but resigned to his fate as his feet became bright pink. 

“So how’s Princess Kitty-Kat been for you, Lexi?” Jason asked, definitely getting way too much enjoyment out of this situation. 

“He’s been really good! He was sad at first, though, because he didn’t know how he was going to get back to his family, but Momma said she would call you and you guys came! He was sad because he wasn’t sure you were going to come.”

Suddenly, instead of resigned, Tim looked more uneasy, actively avoiding Jason and Dick’s gazes.

“Of course, we would come. Family doesn’t leave family behind.”

“That’s what Momma says too, but Princess Kitty-Kat didn’t seem to believe us,” the little girl remarks, just as she finished up Tim’s last fingernail. 

“Perfect! I just need to go get the special drying spray from Momma!” 

The girl leveraged herself off the chair and in a second, she dashed out the door yelling for her mom and leaving the three brothers by themselves.

“So…” Jason started with Tim didn’t speak up. “Princess Kitty-Kat, huh?” 

Tim barked a half-chuckle.

“I told her my name was Tim and that I was a linsang but… Princess Kitty-Kat is more fitting apparently.”

“Well, I’ll say,” Jason snorted, poking the crown on Tim’s head. He crossed his eyes trying to follow Jason’s finger and the tiny motion was more endearing then it should have the right to be. Gently, Jason reached forward and removed the crown clipped to Tim’s fur. “What’s all this about you not believing that we would come to find you?”

“I yelled at you,” Tim admitted. “I told you not to look for me and I was afraid… I was sure that you were going to take that as permission to leave me to your own devices.”

Jason smiled ruffling through Tim’s fur and getting a little giggle out of the cat-weasel. “I promise you, Timmy, by the time I get through with you you’re never going to forget that family doesn’t leave family hurt and anxious and thinking that they are abandoned. That’s just being shitty.”