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Tim was not raised as a human boy. He was hardly raised at all.
There were nannies, of course, until there weren’t. And then minders, until his parents judged him too old for such childish things; and then housekeepers, who came once a week and did not speak to him, and a gardener he rarely saw, and Tim was left alone to grow as wild as he wished.
Perhaps, even then, he could have grown up into a boy; he was a few years off from school, from exhausted teachers and cold classmates and all that shapes the savage things of childhood into proper human creatures. He could have become something small and sad and quiet, with too-sharp eyes hidden behind dark hair and teeth that had forgotten how to bite.
But instead, he found his way to the wild edge of the Drake property, and wandered into the nighttime woods.
There is an important distinction between the woods in day and night. They have the same trees, of course, the same paths and stones and hidden glens, even if the darkness seems to twist them into a new labyrinth each night. And they’ll eat you up just the same, oh yes, though the daytime woods prefers the heat and cicada buzz and hiding bodies away beneath roots, while the nighttime woods is partial to a stumble in the dark and heads dashed on stones. But most importantly of all, the nighttime forest is where the animals hold court.
No human is permitted to see the Animal Court; the forest warns them when the man-things blunder in, and all the lords and ladies and gentlebeings melt away into the darkness to come together another night. But Tim, a feral, too-small thing, with tangled hair and teeth that yet remembered how to rend, who scrambled about on four legs as often as two because there was no one to lift him to his feet - Tim, who wandered into the nighttime woods and had no one to call him back to the light of human homes - why would the forest have any reason to think him a man-thing? Any reason to warn the Court away? Tim found his way to the Animal Court and stole a place between the foxes and the alley cats, and none objected to his presence.
He listened, quiet and intent, to the complaints of bird and beast; to accusations of egg-snatching, of den-stealing, of twig theft, and all such other important matters deserving of the attention of the Court. His dark eyes gleamed in the faint light of the fireflies, and a lady fox beside him took notice of his strange form.
“Why, you look nearly like a man-thing, dear lad,” she exclaimed, drawing near to look him over. “Wherever did you steal a face so well-made as that?”
Tim turned to her, and bowed, for though he was not raised as a human boy he still knew his manners. “I didn’t steal it, I don’t think. It’s my face.”
“Of course it is, my boy,” she nodded in approval, and winked, for foxes have strange magics and can appreciate their talent in others, “What brings you to the Animal Court, dear boy? Do you have a grievance to plead? My niece is learning to be an advocate, and I would gladly offer her services in honor of our new friendship.”
Tim smiled, for he had never had a friend before, and the idea quite pleased him. “Thank you, my lady, and thank you for your friendship. But I didn’t mean to come here, and I think I’m lost.”
“Oh, poor dear,” the lady fox cooed, and wrapped herself around his little body, “Well, one gift can be easily exchanged for another. I will gladly guide you home, once the Court has concluded.”
They sat amidst the crowds and watched with matching gleaming eyes as the moon crested overhead; the lady fox pointed out her niece as she took the stage, and politely applauded as the case was awarded in her favor. When the moon touched the tips of the far trees, the wolf-bailiff howled once, long and mournful and low, and the Animal Court began to disperse. The lady fox took Tim’s hand gently between her teeth and led him into the nighttime woods, leading him back by scent and track along the wandering route he took to reach the Court. In hardly any time at all, they had reached the edge of the wilds, and the lady fox bristled at the vast expanse of open lawn before them.
“Wait here please, my lady,” Tim said, slipping his trusting hand from her jaws, “I wish to give you a gift as well, in honor of our new friendship.” He rushed away to the house and returned, ferrying a tray of raw chicken that had come with the last grocery delivery, and which he was not yet old enough to cook.
“For you, my lady,” he panted, tired from wandering the woods all night, and laid it at her feet. The lady fox preened at this kingly gift, sure now that she’d made the right decision to befriend the strange creature, and scarfed the chicken down in seconds.
“You are so bold, so daring, to steal such from a man-thing’s dwelling,” she praised, licking the last of the juice from her whiskers, “And all for a gift.”
“Oh,” said Tim, and frowned, “I didn’t steal it. That’s my house.”
The lady fox yipped and pranced about him in excitement. “Ah, you’re a man-thing’s pet, and yet you choose to share that bounty with me? Truly what a wonderful friend you are, little face-stealer.”
Tim didn’t think that was right either, but he didn’t want to upset his new friend. And so he nodded, and bowed, and thanked her again for her friendship; and then they parted ways and left, each for their own dens.
From then on, he was always able to find his way to the Animal Court, as all animals in the nighttime woods can. He did not go every night, but he went often enough, until he was known to a few. When he was unsure of his way home, his friend the lady fox would take him, or the alley cat who slept in the rosebushes behind Drake Manor, or the bat whose colony owed him a debt of gratitude after Tim successfully argued that their right to eat the lake lacewings was on equal standing with the lacewings’ desire to live.
The lady fox, and her niece, and her new kits that were born in the spring and fed heartily with meat Tim was still not old enough to cook - though that did not matter as much, now that he ate it raw when he ate alongside her - began to teach him their strange magic of shape-shifting, still convinced he had stolen a face and gotten stuck in the mask. Theirs was not shape-shifting as in the stories - no werewolves stalked the nighttime woods, no beast-in-man’s-guise roamed the streets. But Tim learned how to become a shadow, how to fall to all fours and lope until a passing eye saw a fox instead of a boy, how to walk soft-pawed and assured until a bear wouldn’t think him out of place in its own den.
It was the bats, chittering and gossiping in their swooping flight, who first told Tim of rumors of the Bat-Man, who stole their guise each night to roam the city. Always eager to chat, they told him too of the cave the Bat-Man retreated to each day, home as it was to thousands upon thousands of their kin. It was the alley cats who told him of the Robin, who rescued their kittens from dangerous places and often stole them away, the Robin they feared and loved in equal measure. In another world, in another life, perhaps he would have heard of Batman sooner; perhaps he would know what a superhero was, and perhaps he would fall a bit in love with the idea of Gotham’s brooding protector.
This Tim, this feral thing in the guise of a boy, had last spoken to another human two weeks ago when the gardener stopped him from sneaking into the daytime woods. This Tim had never been taught how to turn on a TV, had only the faintest grasp on how to read; this Tim had roved miles through the woods in the company of beasts of all descriptions, but had never set foot on the road beyond Drake Manor’s gates. This Tim was growing out of his clothes, but there were no nannies to take him to buy new ones, anymore, so he took scissors to too-tight sleeves and begged weaving lessons off the nesting birds to mend his pants. His shoes wore out and fell apart and soon he was running through the woods barefoot, calluses hardening his feet as his body drew into sharp, lean lines.
Perhaps another Tim would take a camera to follow and photograph a superhero; this Tim, eager to meet another animal pretending to be human, so sure the Bat-Man was a creature like him (he stood like a man-thing, the bats whispered, but he has ears and wings like a bat, and he returns to a colony cave each day, and Tim was so, so hopeful) - this Tim called in a favor he’d earned by helping a mama cat move her nest out of reach of dogs, and her colony gladly guided him through the shadows and side streets of Gotham until he saw the Bat-Man.
He watched, fascinated, as the Bat dropped down upon a man with a viciousness that would put the lady fox to shame, but Tim was disappointed when he turned and spoke softly to the woman the man had been attacking. No self-respecting animal would bare its belly so to comfort a human, none other than the loyal house-dogs who visited the Animal Court but rarely to complain of trespasses upon their lands. The Bat-Man was certainly no dog; and he was certainly no face-stealing creature, as Tim was.
But still, he was interesting, and Tim began to split his time between the nighttime woods and nighttime Gotham. He’d long since learned to navigate the forest by smell or touch alone; and with the assistance of the alleycats, he soon reached that level of mastery with Gotham too. The lady fox’s teachings served him well, allowing him to evade sight, to slip the grasp of the dangerous humans who stalked the streets at night. He was caught but once; for his teeth still remembered how to bite, and the man who grabbed him was not expecting this tiny, struggling child to lunge for his jugular with such precision. (If Tim knew how to turn on the TV, he would have been satisfied to learn that the man was high-up in one of Gotham’s gangs; that his death, with his throat seemingly ripped out with human teeth, had thrown the rest of leadership into a fit of paranoia that Batman was preying on like the spectre of death herself. Even as Batman tried to hunt down the killer himself - the bite marks too small for anything but a child, the DNA evidence going nowhere. Gotham in a panic. Tim did not know this, of course. His celebration consisted of swallowing down the blood and fleeing back to the safety of the woods).
Time passed, as it has a habit of doing, and soon enough it was time for Tim to start school. His parents ordered a seamstress to the house from halfway across the world; luckily it was nearly noon when she arrived, so Tim, nocturnal as his life had become, was quite sleepy - otherwise he would have bitten her nose off for trying to enter the house, his den where only he and the housekeepers were allowed.
As it was he watched her through gleaming fox’s eyes, stalked her on silent feet as she bustled about the living room. She shivered under his gaze, and crossed herself, but she was a brave woman, and soon enough Tim was fitted for a set of uniforms. He had no shoes; the clothes he wore beneath the uniform were little more than tattered rags, but she was just a seamstress amidst the rich grandeur of Drake Manor. There was nothing she could do.
Soon after, Tim received a phone call from his mother. He could not recall the last time this had happened; he barely remembered even having a mother, and had thought that he was perhaps like a caterpillar, whose mother had left it as an egg on the underside of a leaf and flown off to make her own way in the world. That was not true, he discovered - he had a mother, and she apparently wished him to wear the uniforms the seamstress had dropped off, and go to school, and above all to not disgrace the family name.
Well, Tim supposed, he could do that, if only for the novelty of discovering he had a mother. And if it was boring, he could simply stop.
The alleycats and little brown sparrows didn’t know what a school was either, but they could show him the building where human boys and girls dressed in his uniform gathered. He was quite pleased to learn “school” took place during the day; it was apparently a nearly every day thing, and if it took place at night (as all proper things do), it would cut into his time with the Animal Court or Batman.
The day he was supposed to go to school (he counted backwards from the phone call - three and two and one - the wolves with their obsession with the moon helped him keep track) he woke and yawned, stretched each limb and then wandered down to share breakfast with the lady fox. The housekeepers wouldn’t be there until the end of the week, and she’d wanted to see him off on his big day, so she’d slept curled up below the sofa. When they’d eaten their fill of meat and bread and milk, the lady fox bid him farewell and slipped out through the always-open back door. Tim, in turn, shrugged on his uniform and set off, slipping through side streets and day-shadows, down the path the cats and sparrows showed him.
He learned two things upon his arrival: School apparently started at a set time (how silly - how would everyone arrive at once, when the daytime and the nighttime and the dawn and dusk animals all woke and slept at different times?), and he would get in trouble if he was late. And, secondly, that he would not be allowed entry without shoes.
Tim remembered shoes, distantly, and though he didn’t see much point to them there was no reason to disappoint his newfound mother over something so insignificant. Denied entry to the school, he wandered around to the fields where he found a group of boys eating together, shoes kicked off nearby so they could rest their feet in the soft grass. It was simple enough to slip close and steal a pair that looked about his size, and when he returned to the school’s guardian she was so tired of dealing with his fox’s eyes that she let him right through.
He ended up with a group of other children his age, in a room decorated in bright colors and soft shapes and pastel drawings of animals that in no way conveyed their feral grace. Tim slipped on his man-thing mask, as the lady fox taught him, and settled in to see what this was all about.
School, it turned out, was largely a waste of time better spent napping, except. Sometimes, they learned things.
Tim was, apparently, very behind his classmates - most could already read, could hold a conversation, knew things about the outside world that didn’t involve the politics of hibernation caves and territory disputes. Tim, privately, thought learning to shapeshift and track and tear out throats was a much better use of his time, but the point stood that his teachers despaired of him - until they finally explained that they wished to teach him, that they weren’t simply giving him strange cardboard books for inscrutable reasons. Tim was a very good student, the lady fox and the stately elk and the river salmon had always said so, and once he understood that school was a place of teachers, it became his third favorite place on earth (behind the Animal Court and nighttime Gotham, of course).
Even as he excelled at learning, Tim did not make friends, no matter how many years passed - he didn’t know how, not with man-things who played without mock-pounces, who chattered about books and cartoons, who shied away from his fox eyes and shuddered every time his mask slipped. That was fine; Tim had plenty of friends already, friends who knew him without his mask, friends who told him interesting things about the new boy at school.
Jason Todd was a few years older than Tim, but once the alleycats began gossiping about the new Robin who fed their kittens but didn’t steal them away, once the rats hummed about the boy who never kicked them as they scurried, once the bluejays sat above him as he waited after school and cackled “Ro-bin, Ro-bin” from the power lines, Tim began to pay attention.
He liked Jason, he thought. The boy was far too much like a loyal house-dog to be anything like Tim’s ilk, but he was, at least, nearly a dog. He’d fought, and bled, and hunted to survive; his teeth had forgotten how to bite, but he’d learned anew. He was no animal pretending to be a man, but Tim felt a little less alone when he watched Jason snap and growl at the jeering older boys. Not that he ever approached the boy, oh no. Tim might like Jason, for his feral snarl and his cornered eyes and his soft way with alleycat kittens, but he was fairly sure Jason wouldn’t like him if he took his mask off. And there was no point to being friends with someone who would flee if they ever saw behind the mask.
He’d gotten better, over the years, at pretending to be human; he learned to buy his own clothes and shoes, to turn on the television, to read the news - but it all seemed so big as to fade back into insignificance. Tim was concerned with the passage of seasons, with the stream hopping its banks and drowning the blackberry patch, with food and play and little else beyond that. Wars and the politics of distant lands held little interest for him.
And then he glanced at the news to find that one of those distant lands had killed Jason. And Tim missed him, of course, missed the bright Robin redbreast keeping watch over the city, missed the loyal house-dog that growled at the stuck-up princes of the school, missed the possibility of one day having his first human friend. But Tim had learned mourning at the knee of the lady fox when her kits were carried off in a flood, with the alleycats as fever swept the colony, from the wolf-bailiff as he lifted his head from the body of the elk he’d cracked jokes with on the speaking rock just days before, just before he dug in for a well-earned meal. He and a few of the less sleepy bats snuck into the graveyard to watch Jason’s funeral from a nearby hill, to watch the boy they’d all seen grow up be lowered into the ground, good only as a meal for worms. They bowed their heads, and let themselves feel the loss, and then they moved on. There was dinner to catch, and sleeping perches to squabble over, and life did not just stop for one boy’s death (no matter how remarkable a boy he was).
Batman did not agree. He fell apart, in violence and tears and rage. It was beautiful to behold, like a summer storm just before it tears a forest asunder. And it would destroy Gotham, make no mistake; Tim knew well the rage of a mother bear separated from her cub, and Batman’s rage was unparalleled. But how to fix it? Obviously no one else could, if they hadn’t by now. Ordinarily Tim would leave such an issue to be the concern of others, but he actually quite liked Gotham. It was just as hungry as the nighttime woods, and had its own predators, its own ecosystem. It felt like home.
So he talked to the bats, to the lady fox, to a mama bear who, too, had lost a cub. It was a roadrunner who brought the solution, a spindly little thing quite far from its desert home, on a journey on behalf of the secret faith of its kind. It told Tim of its tropical cousins, and their strange philosophy regarding nesting. The cuckoos, they called themselves, and they foisted their young off on other birds, running them ragged as the foster parents attempted to feed the fast-growing fledgling.
Well. Tim wouldn’t want to push other eggs out of the nest, but luckily all of Batman’s nestlings had flown away on their own. The nest was empty, and just perfectly sized for a Tim to slip in and take their place. And if Batman had a new fledgling to take care of… why, he would hardly have the energy to destroy Gotham, now would he?
Tim would have his work cut out for him, of course. His mask would have to be perfect, and he couldn’t spend as much time in the woods. He would likely have to wear shoes all the time. But he’d heard Jason once wax poetic about the food at home - glistening roasts, fresh bread, baked vegetables… Tim was fond enough of sharing a steaming, freshly-killed pheasant with his fox friends, and the school cafeteria had almost certainly heated their food at some point in the preparation process, but he was excited to try cooked food that was actually warm for the first time. And he thought it might be fun, perhaps, to pretend to have a parent for a while. If his mother objected, she should not have flown off and left him on a leaf as she had.
He spent the night interrogating the roadrunner about every detail of the cuckoo’s philosophy, and put his plan into action the very next day. Crocodile tears were easy, after years of using them to hide the cracks in his mask. Bruce Wayne opened his door to a child, sobbing about being abandoned by his parents to an empty house - as any good cuckoo should - how he was so scared and alone and desperately needed someone to help him. And of course, if Bruce Wayne was the sort of person to turn away a crying child, they wouldn’t be having this problem in the first place.
Tim had dinner with Bruce and Alfred that very night, and it was just as heavenly as Jason said - spices rich and heavy in the stew, bread soft and warm, so much better than the cold, raw meat that came with the groceries (though he was still partial to the coppery burst of blood from a fresh hunt). They both seemed concerned when he finished eating, his bowl still half-full of stew, but he simply couldn’t eat anymore without bursting, lean as he was. He spent the night in a guest room, and had his very own bedroom in the family wing by the next morning. Bruce walked him back to Drake manor to retrieve his belongings; his expression turned murderous when all Tim packed were a few mud-stained clothes and his school uniforms (a size too small; his parents had forgotten to call in the seamstress this year, and his credit card limit was too low to afford her rates). Tim wasn’t quite sure why, but as long as Batman’s rage was directed at something other than Gotham, he took it as a win.
Bruce had his uniforms refitted, and bought him a closet full of new clothes, and plied him with electronics and games and books. Tim could vaguely recall a time before the Animal Court, back when the nannies had just left and he could still remember his mother’s face, when this was all he could have wanted. Now he was just… amused. Who needs that many clothes? Who needs a cellphone, when he had no one to call? But it pleased Bruce to give him gifts, and Tim supposed a real cuckoo would accept all this as his due, so he didn’t object. When Bruce came to him, and told him the adoption was finalized, that his parents were being brought up on charges of neglect and Tim’s home was the Manor from then on, he was honestly surprised. The point of a cuckoo was for it to leave the nest eventually, for it to be forced out once the parent could no longer take care of it. But, he decided, Bruce didn’t know he was a cuckoo (because Tim was very good at his job), so he was treating Tim like a real son. It warmed something inside him, like the first time he caught a mouse with his bare teeth and the lady fox licked all over his face in praise. Perhaps there was something to this parent business after all.
It was much harder to sneak out to the Court with Bruce checking in on him throughout the night, but Tim found he didn’t mind, especially with a cave full of his bat friends right below his feet. It was easy enough to find the secret entrances with their help, and he ended up down in the Cave every few nights to catch up with them and hear the goings-on of the Court. He timed it carefully, for the narrow window each night that saw Alfred asleep and Bruce out in Gotham, but eventually his luck ran out. He stepped out of one of the side caves to find Bruce returned early, stitching up a wound in his side and staring directly at Tim before he could even think about sliding back into the shadows.
And then, well, there was shouting, and somehow Tim convinced Bruce he’d found the cave entrance by accident and this was his first time down, and that he’d keep Bruce’s secret, of course. Somehow, in the midst of that, he was offered the mantle of Robin. He accepted, without hesitation. Apparently he was better at being a cuckoo than even he knew.
The medical examination required before they begin training revealed a nest of parasites in Tim’s gut - the doctor said it looked like the sort of thing one got from eating raw rabbit, which Tim didn’t even know was a concern. The medicine course required to get rid of them kept him from training for a while longer, but once he began, he soared. He was already strong and fast, skilled at jumping and climbing and slipping into shadows. Learning to fight was new - his first teachers taught him to fight with tooth and claw and desperation, and shifting to a more civilized, nonlethal mode was quite the adjustment. Detective work, too, he’d never done before, but Bruce sometimes seemed shocked by the speed and accuracy of his deductions.
Soon enough he was on the streets, a new Robin flying at Batman’s side, and while it wasn’t quite the same as running through the woods with the lady fox… there was freedom in it too. And, he found, being out at night gave him ample opportunity to connect with his friends, even if he couldn’t get all the way to the Animal Court. Alleycats told him about gatherings of strange men; sewer rats whispered of crates that smelled of drugs. Sparrows would share the layout of a warehouse for a handful of pine nuts. Tim’s detective work was good, but his network of informants was what made it brilliant.
And there were the Titans, too, who brushed off all of Tim’s strangeness as part and parcel of being a Bat, who knew little enough about being human themselves that he almost fit in. He caught himself wondering if he could take his mask off around them - and that trust, perhaps, is what it means to have human friends. It was the best he’d ever felt, outside the nighttime woods. They were his, and he was theirs, and the Tower was his territory as much as Drake Manor was. He’d never felt the urge to scent-mark that the lady fox told him of, but he did begin to hide extra cameras, extra alarms and trinkets and traps. The Tower was his, and any challengers for the right would feel his wrath.
The alarm came when he was alone - because of course it did, the Tower was a wonderful territory, of course there would be challengers - which annoyed Tim, until it pleased him. Much as he would love to hunt the intruder alongside those that belonged to him, this way set him free. This way he could remove his mask, and stalk the halls, and hunt as a fox was meant to, and no one was there to stop him from facing the challenger as he ought.
He found a man in a red helmet, cursing and fighting his way out of one of Tim’s ankle traps, and Tim watched in amusement for a while before he let the man notice him. The man looked up, and he said “Replacement” and “You stole my place” and “Cuckoo bird”, and Tim preened at his skill having been recognized. Until the man reached up and took off his helmet and revealed Jason Todd - dead, gone, Jason Todd, little bird who left an empty nest for Tim to slip right in. He said “Robin is mine” and “The Tower is mine” and “I will take them back from you”, and Tim bristled, because little birds who go away don’t get to demand things back when the big bad fox takes what is offered. He might have liked Jason once upon a time, might have seen something almost like a dog in him once, but Tim killed dogs when they threatened the lady fox. Jason was challenging him, for territory, for name, for a place in the nest he abandoned fair and square, and Tim had never been one to ignore a challenge.
Jason pulled a gun, and laughed when Tim dropped his bo staff, and said “Run little bird, run away from the Red Hood”. But Tim had never been a bird, not like Jason had, and seconds later his teeth were nearly at Jason’s throat.
It went quickly after that; Jason was obviously expecting someone smaller, weaker, a boy slavishly devoted to Bruce’s nonlethality. He was not expecting a fox, not teeth at his throat, not a pocket knife slashed across every inch of open skin, not the feral rage of threatened territory. He was not expecting the pain of a broken leg to harden Tim’s resolve, to fling him back into the fight even harder. He fled the tower, bleeding from every limb, a chunk torn out of his arm instead of his defended throat. He left Tim standing on a broken leg, bruised and sore and swallowing the bloody mouthful with a vicious grin. Jason did not return to Gotham, and Tim thought that was, perhaps, the wisest choice he’d ever made.
It was quiet, for a bit, just Bruce and Tim and Alfred in the manor and in Gotham. Dick stayed away; whenever he returned, Tim stared at him with hungry fox eyes until he shuddered and left the cuckoo’s nest he’d rightfully given up. A red helmeted crime lord disappeared from Gotham’s streets without Bruce ever finding out his identity, and that suited Tim just fine. Perhaps he was not the sort of cuckoo who pushed eggs out of nests; but he was certainly the sort of fox who did not give up prizes once he’d claimed them.
Cass came to stay with them, in the wake of some event, big and earth-shattering and Tim still could not bring himself to care about distant news. It happened, and he fought, and now he had a sister, and the causes of all of this did not concern him. What mattered was that Cass saw him, even through his now-flawless mask. She saw he was an animal pretending to be a boy; but she was a weapon pretending to be a girl, so they developed a kinship, of sorts. It was easier, when they didn’t have to pretend like they did around others. Tim dropped to all fours and shapeshifted as the foxes taught him - an animal where a boy should be without any change to hair or skin at all. Cass sat still and silent until she moved with a fluidity too perfect to be human. He introduced her to the lady fox, and the bats, and the alleycat; she showed him how to disable, to hurt, to kill, without any effort at all. It made Bruce happy, seeing them getting along, but it worried him that they didn’t act like normal children. They were quiet when they played together without him around, quiet like a hidden blade, quiet like a stalking fox, even as they knew Bruce expected them to laugh and run and fill the house with noise, as children who were not animals or weapons did. So they strapped their masks back on, and smiled at him, and laughed together, and reassured him that all was well, two cuckoos in a nest together. And if sometimes they let their masks slip down just enough to show their true eyes, just to each other - well, it was a game the two of them played. Tim quite liked having a sister.
Tim had been a son and Robin long enough to earn Bruce’s trust, for the midnight check-ins to fade away over the years; so he began to split his time once more between nighttime Gotham and the nighttime woods, catching up on all the gossip and politicking he missed during his time as a cuckoo. The Animal Court was changed and yet the same - kits grown up into new faces, old stags dead and eaten, and yet the same squabbles, the same cases as were argued when Tim first stumbled across it. It was home, in a way distinct from territory - like the Manor was home, despite it belonging to Bruce. Tim smiled and offered to argue the rights of snakes to eat birds’ eggs, and wandered home as the sun crested the horizon. The lady fox - gray-muzzled now, but stately as ever - and her grandkits played about his feet, and he found himself drawn into their silly stalk-and-pounce game, rolling about in the soft brush. One drew blood, and Tim praised her strength of jaw and sharpness of tooth.
It was there a boy found them, dark-haired and green-eyed and with a face like a miniature version of Bruce. He hid in the forest’s shadow so well that for long minutes even Tim didn’t notice him - but once he did, he herded the kits back behind him, and growled a warning at the interloper. Perhaps that was not correct; perhaps he should have put his mask back on and pretended to be a man-thing, but his mask was always off when he played with the foxes, and he could not remember where he put it to slip it back on. Not, at least, while he was busy protecting the kits.
But the boy just sat in the shadows of the trees, cross-legged, body language open and arms loose. He stayed that way until Tim stopped growling, until the lady fox and her daughter came to retrieve the kits and spirit them away into the woods. He stayed perfectly still until Tim calmed enough to at least locate his mask, even if he didn't put it back on. Only then did the boy speak.
“You are Timothy, correct?”
Tim tilted his head, sorted through his memories, and remembered - yes, once upon a time his distant mother called him that. He nodded.
The boy hummed, and gently settled his hands in his lap. “I was told you are my father’s heir. That you usurped the eldest’s place in his regard, and now he sees you as his own true son.”
Tim tilted his head the other way, and considered his response, rolling the words about his mouth like he would a bit of gristle. “If you’re talking about Bruce,” he said, watching the boy with keen fox eyes, seeing him startle when Tim spoke in words instead of growls, “Then I suppose I am. I wouldn’t be a very good cuckoo if I let other birds into the nest.”
The boy nodded, and there was silence in the forest until he spoke again. “And what of Cain? You do not seem to mind her presence in the Manor.”
Tim snorted, and laughed. Silly humans. Why would Cass be a problem? “She’s a weapon, not a bird. I’m not a bird either, not really, but we both pretend. It makes Bruce happy.”
Tim rolled over, happy to sprawl in the sun as the boy chewed on his answer. When he next spoke, his voice was louder, and Tim opened his eyes to find he’d moved into the clearing - still loose, still open, but sitting closer now.
“I am Bruce’s blood son, Damian. I-“ he hesitated, but seemed to steel himself before meeting Tim’s fox eyes. “I would like to ask your permission to live in your territory, so I may learn from my father.”
Tim rolled to his stomach and gave the boy his full attention. He met Tim’s gaze head-on, unflinching, and so Tim smiled at him. Not the friendly, human mask-smile he showed Bruce, but equally not the vicious joy he wore after a fight. Something in between. “It’s not my territory, it’s Bruce’s,” he said, waving an airy hand, “And anyway, I’m not the sort of cuckoo to push eggs out of the nest. Not when they haven’t given it up themselves, yet.”
Damian nodded, and stood, and bowed. “Thank you for your generosity, Timothy,” he hesitated, “Do you wish to return to the Manor together?”
And so Tim rolled to his feet and they exited the daytime woods, side by side.
Damian was human - he had a mother who loved him, who spoke to him, who raised him, however much she hurt him as well. He was not a weapon, he was not an animal, he had masks as Bruce did, but not as Tim and Cass do. But he cared for them all the same - helped Cass keep herself sharp, let Tim curl up in his lap and pet him, and asked neither of them to speak in human words. It calmed Bruce to see them together, even if their preferred quiet worried him still. Damian’s menagerie grew, and sometimes Tim brought him fox kits, alley kittens, newborn fawns sick with things the forest could not heal. He was human, but a human who respected those who were not.
So when ninja began to slip through the shadows of Gotham, when whispers sounded through the streets and the alleycats told him of a man with green-glowing eyes who smelled of death, Tim watched with his fox’s eyes, and grinned with sharp, sharp teeth. He may be a cuckoo, but he was also a fox, and Damian was his. Tim had no objections to ripping out throats to keep him.