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Chapter Text

The moon was pulling on him, glittering coldly between gaps in Gotham’s ever-present cloud layer. Jason flicked his ears nervously, tilting his head to pick up as much noise as possible. It wasn’t the full moon, not yet, but the smog was thinner than it should be, and Jason could feel the moon’s pull like a film under his skin.

He still had a few days until the full moon, hopefully just enough to snatch a few tires and buy some more Wolfsbane. He didn’t want to go into debt, especially not with the sort of people who sold Wolfsbane.

Jason crept through the alleys, his skin crawling with the unrelenting itch of the moon’s call. He couldn’t see in the dark in his human form, but with his nose and ears Jason was better off at night than the majority of crime alley kids.

Crime alley – all of it, even at the best of times – reeked of blood, trash, and sewage. It was almost overwhelming on nights near the full moon, drowning Jason’s nose in filth. Tonight, though, there was something else.

The rubber-steel-gasoline scent of a car, and not a rusty, broken-down car. A well-kept, probably brand-new car.

Only a fool would park in crime alley, and fools… Well, fools deserved what came to them.

Jason peeked his head around the corner, his ears on swivels. He didn’t hear anyone. He didn’t smell anyone, even from the direction of the car.

Jason took a deep breath and started down the alley. He couldn’t tell what color the car was in the unsure lighting, but it was something dark. Blue, black, or red, most likely. It had fancy molding on the body, sharp lines and swoops, and the weird fin-thing on the back that racecars had. Jason had no idea what it was called, and he didn’t really care.

The tires were the part Jason was interested in. They were polished to a dark shine, and when Jason ran his hands down the hubcap, he felt runes etched into the metal. The metal was plated with some sort of silver alloy. Jason could feel it rasping against the pressure of the moonlight like rough wood on his skin.

These tires – the hubcaps alone, probably – could get him enough Wolfsbane to last a year.

In moments he had the car propped up on his old rusty scissor jack and was working on the first tire. The bolts were high quality steel, coated in the same silver-something alloy, and Jason tucked them carefully into his pocket. They were probably worth a fortune just on their own.

Jason wriggled a tire off and rolled it around the corner to lean against the alley wall. Something moved in the shadows as he was walking back, and Jason almost jumped out of his skin.

His heart pounded in his chest as he stared at the disgruntled alley cat squirming out of the dumpster. Jason took a deep breath, automatically looked behind him, then scuttled away.

He couldn’t get his heart to calm down after that, and he found himself checking over his shoulder every few seconds, his ears straining to the max. There was barely any wind in the alley, or anywhere in Gotham, and Jason’s nose kept twitching from the distinct scent of silver and magic that the car was leaking.

He got the second tire off with practiced efficiency, rolling it to the same place he’d left the first. His nerves were fraying with tension as he started the third, and Jason decided he’d leave with just three. He didn’t need all four tires. He probably only needed the bolts, honestly.

There was a quiet rustle that seemed as loud as thunder to Jason’s strained senses, and his head shot up. He searched the alley carefully, but the shadows were just as impenetrable as before. Jason brushed it off as the cat again, nervously going back to his work.

“You do know that’s the Batmobile, right?”

Jason jumped out of his skin, spinning towards the voice. His throat closed with terror as he looked up, and up, and up. Batman’s voice was unmistakable, even though Jason had never heard it himself, and the white lenses staring Jason down were even more so.

Jason took a nervous step back, clutching the tire iron to his chest. His back hit the car – the Batmobile – and Jason stopped, mouth dry.

Batman was huge, blotting out the moonlight and looming over Jason like a nightmare brought to life. He made Willis Todd look like a cheerleader in comparison.

And Jason had tried to steal his tires.

Batman doesn’t kill, but it hadn’t been until now that Jason realized how much worse than death it could get. Fools deserved what came to them.

“I- I didn’t-”

Batman swayed a step forward, perfectly silent even to Jason’s ears, and Jason’s nerve broke.

He hurled the tire iron at the Bat as hard as he could and bolted down the alley, toppling onto all fours and tucking his tail between his legs. The world blurred into motion and shapes, scents and indistinct impressions.

Wolf-Jason didn’t know where he was going or what he was doing, only that he needed to run. Run for safety.

Something was running after him, chasing him, hunting him. It creaked and thumped but barely made any sounds at all, and Jason couldn’t smell it.

Jason ran on, trying to pick up a comforting scent or find a familiar place. Nothing, nothing, nothing.

Something appeared ahead of him, as though a shadow on the wall had detached itself, and Jason skidded to a stop, his paw pads aching and his chest tight. The thing was huge and black, and it made Jason think of his Alpha, and sharp teeth, and chiding blows of huge paws.

Jason crouched and tucked his tail, creeping away from the figure. The figure clearly did not care, as it darted towards Jason, reaching out a black limb.

Jason couldn’t help but freeze as the limb closed around his scruff, lifting him off the ground. A typical werewolf puppy Jason’s age was about the size of a fully-grown wolf, but Jason was closer to a border collie, and the figure lifted him with ease.

A low, deep rumble came from the figure’s chest, not a growl but not a contented grumble. Jason whined apologetically, curling up as tight as he could dangling in the air with a hand in his scruff.

The figure wrapped Jason against his chest, belly up like a still-blind pup, and Jason whined again.

The figure was walking, stalking through dark streets as though it was noon day.

“-parents.” The figure – man, person, that was a person – said, setting Jason on a smooth black surface. Car seat. He was in a car, on a seat. He was in Batman’s car.

Human-Jason wrenched himself away from Wolf-Jason, shifting abruptly from a useless werewolf cub to a useless werewolf child.

“You’re back.” Batman observed, his voice devoid of emotion.

Jason lunged for the door, heart pounding. It was locked. Or he was pulling the wrong handle. Or- or it was enchanted. Whichever it was, Jason couldn’t get out.

He was stuck in a Hunter’s car, and Batman knew he was a werewolf, and the full moon was in a few days, and Jason had tried to steal his tires.

Jason’s heart wanted to beat through his ribs. There was a thousand things Batman could do to him now, and nobody would ever know. Nobody would care, either. Not with his parents dead and him scorned and how the law felt about werewolves, and- and- and Jason would rather die himself than be taken home by a man five times his size and made to do who knows what, except he did know what and that made everything so much worse, because-

“Kid!” Batman snapped, and Jason’s eyes lurched to him automatically, his ears pinned, “You need to breathe.”

Jason was breathing, what was he talking about- oh. Jason sucked in a deep breath, breaking off his hyperventilation and spluttering for air.

“What’s your name?” Batman interrupted Jason’s gasping, and it took Jason three tries to answer.

“J- Jason, I- I’m sorry-”

“Where are your parents?” Batman asked, pinning Jason in place with his emotionless white lenses.

“I don’t- don’t have none.”

“Guardians?”

What a nice, polite, rich person word. ‘Guardians’. As if he didn’t know what the foster system was like. Jason silently shook his head, unable and unwilling to voice everything he had to say about ‘guardians’.

“What about your Alpha?”

Jason shook his head again, trembling all over. Now he knew. Nobody was going to come looking for Jason. Not that it would have stopped Batman if they had.

Batman said nothing, eyes forward. Gotham shot by on either side, and Jason curled himself into tense ball, ears flattened sideways. It wasn't a wolf expression, but one he had learned from the street cats. Most humans read it as submissive, and it had become automatic when Jason was trying to get out of a tough situation.

There was no hope of escaping this, but Jason preferred not to think about it. Instead, he curled himself up as tight as he could on the black seat and stared out the window. Gotham whipped past him, and the lights blurred together then faded away into darkness.

Sluggishly, still half-asleep, Jason felt the moon go down. His ears slid down his head, back to regular human anatomy. Claws slid into fingernails and his tail shrunk into his spine. It was a transformation so familiar that it barely woke him. Two weeks of every month it would happen every night, and Jason had gotten so used to it that he could usually sleep right through it. Usually.

This morning something felt off.

Jason shifted, trying to figure out what was wrong. He didn't feel hurt, and he couldn't remember anything different last night… Whatever he was lying on shifted with him, and Jason's eyes shot open. It was soft. Way, way too soft.

Jason squirmed up, onto his knees, then over the side of the ridiculously huge bed he was perched on. He hit the floor sideways with a thump, scrambling to his feet and taking stock of the room.

The wall in front of him was dominated by thick, dark red curtains, and there was a slice of sunshine beaming through them. On the other side of the bed was a white door, and another on Jason's left. To the side of the door was a huge, stupidly fancy wardrobe. The floor was covered with a thick, fluffy carpet that Jason's toes sank into.

The events of the previous night came flooding back to him, and Jason rapidly searched the room again for some hint at Batman's presence. Surely Batman wasn't a part of the trafficking ring that ran the orphanages, right? Where would he have dropped Jason in such a short amount of time? That is, if it had only been a night.

Jason barely had a moment to panic before the door to his left clicked and swung open. Jason whipped towards it, taking a wary step back towards the wall. There was a teenager standing in the door, maybe sixteen, in a pair of black slacks and a cardigan.

"Oh!" The teenager said, face lighting up, "You're awake!"

Jason took another step back, gaze flicking to the curtains. Surely there was a window behind them. If he could get it open fast enough, he may be able to get out before the teen could call for help. Jason was pretty confident in his ability to fight off one human teenager.

The teen took a step into the room, closing the door behind him, and Jason immediately revised his estimate. He may have been in a mostly humanoid form, but his nose was still better than any human's and the soft, sweet scent that was carried towards him from the wind of the door closing was acutely familiar. A human teenager he could deal with in human form. A fae of indeterminate age he decidedly couldn't.

Jason bolted for the window, ducking under the curtain and scrambling up onto the windowsill. His fingers scrabbled over the ledge on top of the window for the catch.

"Hey!" The fae called, and Jason barely heard the quick footsteps under the pounding of his heart in his ears.

His fingers finally caught on the lever, and he frantically shoved it aside. He threw his weight against the window, hauling it up with all his might. The window slid open, and Jason gripped the side, sliding his legs outside. Before he could drop to the roof below him, a hand closed on his collar, yanking him back, away from the window.

Jason yelped, tipping against the curtain. He landed on his back with a breath-stealing thud and laid there for a moment, gasping and choking, as the fae's face appeared in his line of sight.

"Sorry!" The fae said, "I'm really sorry, that was an accident, you were going to fall out the window and I just reacted automatically!"

Jason took a deep breath, frozen in place. The fae was strong. Too strong for a teenager. Probably stronger than Willis. And now he was standing between Jason and the window.

"Are you okay?" The fae asked, face crinkled up like he was actually concerned, but Jason knew better. Fae were experts at lying without actually lying, and they could fake any emotion they wanted.

Jason remained resolutely silent, jaw clenched with terror and obstinacy in equal measure. The fae frowned down at Jason, his face pulled into an incredibly convincing expression of upset confusion.

"Did you hit your head?" The fae tried again, and Jason remained completely still. After a moment, the fae gave up on getting a response.

"Come on, let’s get you checked out," He reached down and tugged Jason up onto his feet, laying a hand on his shoulder. A hand that could very easily snap a bone or two. Jason moved obediently when the fae nudged him, walking stiltedly to the door.

The door swung open just as they reached it, a man in a fancy suit with his hand on the door. He was huge, tall and so broad shouldered that he almost filled up the doorframe. He had piercing ice blue eyes that seemed to stare into Jason's soul the same way the white lenses in Batman's mask had.

"Bruce!" The fae chirped, " I think something's wrong with Jason! He tried to climb out the window and I pulled him back in, but I think he might have hit his head."

"He's fine." The man said. Bruce. Bruce Wayne based on the mansion and the suit and the fae that was obviously Dick Grayson still standing behind Jason like a predator waiting for him to slip up.

"He's just scared." Wayne continued, snapping Jason out of his spiral.

Jason forced his eyes away from Wayne's, down to the floor, and took a deep, subtle breath through his nose. He couldn't smell any direct magic on Wayne, just some faint traces he would have picked up from being near fae. Except… There was something familiar in Wayne's scent, but Jason couldn't quite put his finger on it.

"Follow me, Jason." Wayne directed, and with Grayson trailing behind him as an active threat Jason had to follow the man down several rich hallways and into a cozy living room.

"Sit down," Wayne offered, and Jason sat, gingerly perched on the edge of the navy-blue sofa. Wayne sat in the loveseat across from him, leaning on his knees.

"Jason," Wayne started, "Have you heard of Setsu?"

Jason nodded hurriedly, hands clutching at his knees. Grayson was drifting through the room behind the couch, and Jason reached out mentally towards his wolf, preparing to yank himself into wolf form. If he messed up here, Grayson would attack, and Jason needed to be ready to shift and defend himself.

"What do you know about them?" Wayne asked, and Jason had to snap back into the conversation. Part of him still tracked the fae hovering behind him while Jason scrambled to think of an appropriate answer. What did Wayne want to hear?

"They-" Jason rasped, shaking, "They're soulmates, right? Destined to be together?"

"Pretty much," Wayne smiled slightly, and Jason resisted the urge to sigh with relief. He'd said the right thing.

"You see, Jason." Wayne explained, "I have my car enchanted to only let my soulbound through the wards."

Jason blinked, confused at where the conversation had gone. He hadn't gotten to any warded cars in… ever, actually. None except the Batmobile. Jason's eyes snapped to Wayne, who was still smiling slightly. That alone was more emotion than Batman had shown.

"I- I dunno what your talkin' about, sir." Jason managed, flickering a glance at Grayson, "I didn't- I ain't been messing with no cars."

"I know you have." Wayne disagreed softly, "Because I found you taking the tires off the Batmobile last night."

Jason opened and closed his mouth, unable to form words. His heart pounded in his chest, and Jason was sure Grayson could hear it with his fae senses.

"There's no need to be scared," Wayne said, cutting through Jason's haze of panic, "We don't intend to harm you in any way."

"We don't intend to harm you in any way!" Grayson parroted, word for word, and Jason squinted at him. Why would he…? Realization struck Jason hard, followed immediately by relief. Fae couldn't lie.

Based on his ears and fingers and scent, Grayson was definitely a full-blooded fae, not a drop of human blood in his ancestry. He couldn't lie to anyone even if he wanted to. Everything he said had to be true.

Jason took a deep, shuddering breath, and it felt like he could breathe for the first time since he woke up.

Chapter Text

Barbara tugged on her cowl, admiring the final look in the mirror over her dresser. She’d sewn the cape and cowl herself, made of thick black canvas fabric to make it hang kind of like Batman’s cloak. Batman’s armor was imitated by a black long-sleeve shirt Barbara had painted a bright yellow bat-symbol on, which was pulled over her bulletproof vest and a few cardboard inserts to give it the right shape. She had fake bracers made of plastic that she’d bought from the party store and repainted and a ‘utility belt’ that was actually just a regular belt with her pocketknife, can of mace, and phone case clipped to it. To complete the look, she was wearing black cargo pants and black combat boots.

From several feet away, if she squinted and tilted her head, she actually looked decently like a smaller, female Batman with a tail. Not close enough to actually get mistaken for Batman, but enough that it was obvious what she was going for, and that she’d done a good job.

Barbara grinned at her reflection, flaring her cloak dramatically behind her, like Batman landing on a roof, then spun in a tight circle, making the black canvas spin around her. She finally stood up straight, letting the cloak just barely brush the ground at the tips.

“I’m going to the station!” Barbara called, pulling the door of her room open.

There was an answering grunt from somewhere else in the house, and then her dad called after her, “Stay safe!”

“I will!” Barbara shut the front door behind her, stepping out onto the sidewalk. It was a short walk to the station, only a few blocks away, and even in Gotham, people avoided making trouble so close to the police station. A knife, some pepper spray, and a few self-defense courses were enough for her to handle anyone or anything that came after her.

There was someone on the other side of the street dressed as… an ant? An ant-based superhero? It wasn’t anyone Barbara had seen before, but she was only really familiar with Gotham and the core Justice League members, the ones that everyone knew. Still, she grinned and waved at the guy, who looked at her like she was insane, but tentatively waved back.

A sleek black car drove between them, pulling into the GCPD parking lot at the same time as Barbara stopped at the crosswalk. The parking lot was already filling up fast, and there were several cars pulling into or out of spots. Barbara idly watched the new car slide into a spot near the street. The driver got out to open the back door, and Barbara almost lost her jaw. No way.

No way was that Bruce Wayne, stepping out of his car in the GCPD parking lot, dressed in a Superman costume that might well have been the real thing.

The ant-guy from before sped up, turning into the parking lot instead of continuing towards the GCPD. Barbara frowned at him. There was something off about this whole scene. The standard patterns of life and people were skewed a bit to the left. Barbara wasn’t exactly sure what – maybe a strange gait, maybe a head tilted just a bit too far, maybe something else entirely – but the fur on the tip of her tail stood on end, and she couldn’t tear her eyes away from Bruce Wayne and the ant-guy.

Wayne tugged on his cape, turning to say something to the driver, and the ant-guy surged forward. Acting purely on instinct, Barbara lunged after him.

Something flashed in his hand, flickering the same way a knife in the dark would. He was moving too quickly for Barbara to reach him, and the knife was at Wayne’s throat before any of them could do anything.

Over the ant-guy’s shoulders, Wayne’s eyes met Barbara’s. Barbara had seen hostage situations before, in movies, on the news, and even a few times in person. No matter the person, whether they were hysterical or obstinately stoic, there were always patterns. The patterns that showed weakness, helplessness. That they couldn’t get out of this situation on their own.

Wayne had none of the patterns.

His eyes were cold and clear, confident in… something. His own abilities, maybe? Barbara could understand a billionaire wanting to learn some self-defense or how to get out of a hold on their own, but surely not Brucie Wayne.

Almost before she had a chance to feel confused, Wayne was moving. His knee shot up, jabbing into a place Barbara knew would really hurt a guy. Apparently, ant-guy was actually male, and he folded in half over his abused groin. Wayne attempted to slip away, but the ant-guy closed a fist in his collar, slamming him back against his own car. Which. Rude.

Fortunately, the knife was – for the moment – out of play, so Barbara could move again.

She delivered a powerful front kick to the ant-guy’s unprotected side, ramming her combat boots into his ant-like armor. The armor which was, apparently, actually armor. Her kick didn’t so much as dent it, but it did have all the force Barbara could put into her sixteen-year-old body, and it made ant-guy stumble and almost fall over.

That freed up Wayne, who quickly ducked the other way, diving around the car. Hopefully, he was running away. Barbara didn’t hear the familiar pattern of running shoes on asphalt, so he must be sticking around like an idiot, but at least he was a bit farther away.

Ant-guy recovered admirably from the kick, lifting his knife into a defensive position. Barbara yanked her own knife from her belt, taking a wary step back. She was at a significant disadvantage now. She’d lost the element of surprise, and her bulletproof vest was bulky enough to hinder her movement in a fight while simultaneously not offering her much protection from, say, a knife.

Ant-guy lunged, and Barbara’s brain kicked into high gear. She was built to recognize patterns, to find things that repeated, things that were the same. He was favoring his right side – where she’d kicked him – but was otherwise a reasonably effective fighter. But he fought like Barbara had been told not to. He followed patterns. Probably, it wouldn’t have been a problem in a regular fight. In a fight, most people were paying attention to where the knife was right now, not where it had been ten seconds ago.

Barbara dodged backwards, ignored the ant-guy’s obvious feint – obvious to her, at least – and then lurched forward while he was trying to move his knife into position again. She smacked his hand away, grabbed one of the weird antennae on his helmet, and yanked it sharply downward.

Instead of his head lurching downwards to tip him off balance, like Barbara had expected, the whole helmet simply slid off. Barbara blinked, finding herself holding a lime green helmet and staring at a furious man in his early forties with an angular face and close-cropped blonde hair.

The man started to move, and Barbara dropped the helmet, snatching at the second weapon clipped to her belt. The ant-guy caught a powerful jet of pepper-spray directly to his eyes, nose, and mouth.

He doubled over with a muffled gurgle, clawing at his face.

“That was incredible!”

Barbara almost jumped out of her skin, whirling to see Wayne peering around the end of the car.

“Do you work with Batman!?” The billionaire CEO gasped, almost starry-eyed.

Barbara abruptly realized what this whole situation looked like. She’d appeared out of nowhere right when help was needed, dressed as a female imitation of Batman, and dropped the criminal going after Bruce Wayne all on her own.

“Sorry, no,” Barbara managed, “I was just passing by.”

But what if she did? She’d seen some… patterns in the way Batman worked, and how the city felt after he’d swept through. She could be part of that, if she wanted to.

Those thoughts were very dangerous, especially for her. Batman was illegal.

Wayne was looking at her with a look that, on anyone else, Barbara might have called predatory. On him it just looked… focused.

“Would you walk with me inside?” He asked, his face reverting to the typical Brucie Wayne Barbara had come to expect on the news or public appearances. “Alfred will take care of reporting the incident.” He offered Barbara an arm, grinning sunnily. Barbara glanced at the driver – who already had a phone out and smiled reassuringly at her – then hesitantly placed her hand on Wayne’s arm.

The GCPD doors slid open before them, letting them into the waiting room. The receptionist was standing at the front desk in a traditional maid costume and a pair of cat ears. She startled slightly at the sight of Bruce Wayne and a masked Batman look-alike walking in together, but she rapidly regathered her composure and directed them to the left.

Wayne continued to stride confidently onward, Barbara on his arm, until they were ushered into the party. The GCPD building had initially been a fancy hotel, before zoning laws and public presence had shifted, and they’d kept the ballroom in mostly the same state as they’d found it.

The floor was smooth, polished hardwood, and half the room was clustered with black-clothed tables while the other half was left bare for dancing. People in every style and quality of costume crowded the room, talking, dancing, eating, and laughing.

“Ah, if it isn’t Brucie!” a woman said from the other side of Wayne, and Barbara blinked, turning to peer past him. The woman was wearing a scanty angel costume, complete with a sparkly halo. The fluffy white wings on her back twitched and fluttered, though they shimmered falsely to Barbara’s eyes. Illusions, and expensive ones at that. Barbara wouldn’t be surprised if the glitzy gemstones on her halo and neckline were actual diamonds.

“Oh, Miss, uh…” Wayne trailed off, smiling blandly.

“Pierce,” the woman filled in, her fake smile not even twitching, “Angela Pierce.”

“Right! Miss Pierce!” Wayne grinned, and that, too, struck Barbara as false. “So lovely to see you tonight!”

“Of course,” Miss Pierce purred, batting her eyelashes that had been decked out with glittery silver mascara, “I do so love seeing you around- oh! Who’s this?”

Barbara had finally caught her attention, and Miss Pierce was glaring daggers at her under simpering eyelashes. That, finally, registered as truth.

“I’m not sure!” Wayne… lied. Barbara blinked, her gaze drifting to him. He’d said it so perfectly, without even a twitch, and for a moment, Barbara thought her instincts were lying to her. But no, the lie hung in the air in front of him like a puff of smoke that only she could see. He knew who she was?

“I found her outside,” Wayne blathered on, “and I asked if she wanted to come in with me!”

“Oh, that’s… lovely,” Miss Pierce said, another lie drifting into the air.

“Nice to meet you, Miss Pierce,” Barbara said, letting her own lie billow from her lips, “I like your wings.”

“Oh, thank you,” Miss Pierce said, clearly taken aback by Barbara’s polite greeting. “I don’t believe I caught your name.”

‘I don’t believe I threw it’, Barbara didn’t say. “I’m Barbara Gordon,” she said instead, “The commissioner is my dad.”

“Ah, I had wondered about your costume,” Miss Pierce said, relaxing slightly and eyeing the bat on Barbara’s chest. It was, admittedly, a bit of a risky move to dress up as Batman in Gotham. Barbara knew that very well, but she’d done it anyway.

“I quite like it,” Wayne said airily, “It’s a startlingly accurate depiction.”

“The tail messes up the image a bit,” Miss Pierce said lightly, shooting Barbara a flinty look. Barbara tucked her tail under her cape, offering her a sharp smile in return. Her canines were just a bit longer and sharper than a human’s, only enough to be unsettling. Miss Pierce looked away.

“Oh, sorry,” Wayne lied, peering over the heads of the crowd, “I think I see someone I know! Bye!”

He plowed through the crowds like a stone dragged through mud, getting caught up in brief conversation, but quickly pulling himself away again. He never changed direction, so Barbara assumed his friend was seated at one of the tables in the back.

Wayne promptly led her past the tables and out the back door of the ballroom, into the plushly-carpeted hallway beyond. It was much quieter without the music and chatter, and the hallway lights were significantly less blinding than the massive chandelier in the ballroom.

“You’re a sphinx, right?” Wayne asked, a sharp intelligence in his eyes that startled Barbara, “You can tell when someone is lying?”

“I- yes, I can,” Barbara said, taken aback, “Why…” This was the third time she’d seen something in him that she never would have expected in a thousand years. Once was an accident, twice was coincidence, three times was a pattern.

“I need you to be sure I’m telling the truth,” Wayne said lowly, his blue eyes boring into Barbara’s, “What I’m about to tell you is completely classified.”

“I don’t- why me?” Barbara asked, breathing fast.

“Because you’re my soulbound.” Wayne said, grave, serious, and entirely truthful.

Humans didn’t have soulbound. Most fay didn’t even have soulbound. The only time the term ‘soulbound’ came up was when discussing…

“Setsu,” Barbara breathed, gaping at Wayne, “You’re a Setsu.”

He smiled at her. His first smile, she realized, that didn’t strike her as false.

“I am,” He acknowledged, “but that’s not all.”

“It’s not?!”

“You should ask your dad about it,” Wayne told her, “He’ll tell you more once you get home. It’s too dangerous to do it out in the open here.”

He slipped his hand from hers and melted back through the door, returning to the party. Barbara was left standing alone in the hallway, trying to reason through what she’d learned.

Patterns. She was born to recognize patterns, to tease them apart and memorize the way they moved and shifted. Bruce Wayne had two sets of patterns, one for the public and one for… well, she wasn’t entirely sure. Hopefully, her dad could tell her that.

Barbara took a deep breath and slipped back into the party. She intentionally avoided looking for Wayne, instead scanning the crowd for her father, who must have arrived by then. Sure enough, he was standing by the wall next to Detective Montoya, wearing the same lion costume he used every year. Barbara made her way towards him, dodging neatly through the crowd.

“Hey Dad,” she said, fidgeting absently with the hem of her cape, “Have you ever noticed anything… off about Bruce Wayne.”

She looked up, and realized that her dad and Detective Montoya were both looking at her intently, her dad’s golden eyes glittering behind his glasses.

“Bruce Wayne,” her dad started slowly, “Is a… special kind of person.”

There was something in his posture, in his gaze, even in the way he spoke, that only confirmed what Barbara had already expected.

“You know,” she said, and glanced at Detective Montoya, “You both know! That he’s-”

She cut herself off, scanning the area around them, then continued in almost a whisper, “That he’s Setsu.”

Her dad sighed, rocking back on his heels. “First time I met him, he was eight years old, covered in his mother’s blood and gripping a handful of pearls from her necklace.” Barbara had heard this story before, half a dozen times from half a dozen sources, but she trusted her dad’s version best. “The first thing I said to him,” Her dad continued, “was to ask if he wanted to come away from the bodies.”

Detective Montoya sighed, staring into her cup.

“He broke down crying,” Her dad said, ignoring Montoya, “It took several hours for him to tell me why. I was only his second soulbound, and that rollercoaster of emotions was almost enough to knock him out.”

“You-!” Barbara almost shouted, then hastily quieted herself again, “You’re one of his soulbound?”

“Yeah,” her dad said, and a little grin made its way onto his face, “You too, huh?”

Barbara’s tail flicked self-consciously, but she nodded. “I saved him from some guy with a knife.”

Detective Montoya choked on her drink, and Barbara’s dad looked like she’d just punched him in the throat.

“You WHAT?!”

“There was a guy with a knife in the parking lot,” Barbara hurried to explain as eyes turned towards them, attracted by her dad’s sudden outburst, “I just moved automatically.”

To her eternal disgrace, the lie slipped from her lips and hung in the air like colored smoke, and she smiled guiltily at her dad.

He just sighed, pushing his glasses up to pinch the bridge of his nose, “Just- just don’t do it again, okay?”

Barbara opened her mouth, then closed it without saying anything. She couldn’t promise that.

“Oh, go enjoy the party,” Her dad said, accepting her silence for what it was and waving a vague arm around them, “I need to talk to you when we get home, but you should have fun while you’re here.”

— — —

“He’s BATMAN!!?”

Chapter Text

Tim smelled blood. He was no werewolf, he couldn't track down drugs or gunpowder by scent alone, but blood he could do. Tim slung his camera onto his back and clambered up the wall, digging his nails into the cracks between bricks. He paused on the roof, drawing in a deep breath, then turned to the origin of the scent.

Typically, the blood Tim followed led to an ordinary exchange. A gang conflict or someone in the wrong place at the wrong time. When that happened, Tim would snap pictures of the important offenders and move on. Sometimes, though, he actually found what he was looking for.

It probably wasn't what he was looking for tonight. The scent of blood didn't carry the traces of silver and petrichor from a werewolf or wild daffodils and cotton candy like a fae. Not that Tim had expected either. Nightwing worked pretty much exclusively in Bludhaven, and Jackdaw hadn’t been seen in… too long.

Tim picked his way across another roof, hunkering down on the gravel behind the low concrete wall. In the alley underneath him, three men were crumpled into broken heaps, blood laying thick around them. A black shadow stood over them, the scent of blood thick on his gloves.

In better light, Tim would have been able to see the blood on his gloves. But from this perspective, he could only see a silhouette, a shadow on the darkness. The men at Batman’s feet were still alive – their blood was still living blood – but they were clearly not going to get up anytime soon.

Batman’s head tipped up, and Tim hastily ducked behind the lip of the roof, heart pounding in his chest. Batmans’ own blood had always smelled human-but-a-bit-to-the-left. Like the faraway glow of sunshine, the faintest saccharine cotton candy, the lightest touch of sunbaked sand, and a hint of petrichor. Fae, Sphinx, and Werewolf. Nightwing, Batgirl, and Jackdaw. Dick Grayson, Barbara Gordon, and Jason Todd. Tim had never met a Setsu before, but it was the only thing that fit. He didn’t know what senses Batman could get from his soulbound. He just hoped Batman couldn’t smell as well as a werewolf.

Tim waited for a minute, painstakingly counting out the seconds, then poked his head over the ledge. The shadow was gone. Tim eased himself over the edge, digging his claws into the brickwork to scrambling down the wall.

The figures on the street were still alive. Still warm. But they wouldn’t be for long. Even Tim’s amateur inspection revealed broken bones, limbs almost torn off. Still-beating hearts, but weak breath and barely enough cognitive power to groan under his inspection. Tim hurriedly dialed emergency services, whispering only his location and that there were men that needed immediate medical attention before he hung up.

Tim stumbled out of the alley into a slightly wider street. There was a scent like ozone and running water in the air, something that reeked like magical wards. The Batmobile had been here, then. It wasn’t anymore, and Tim cast a wary glance around before scrambling up another wall.

Back on the roofs, he started for home. It would take him much longer than it would Batman, but Tim was supposed to be up and about at night. His ‘day’ had only just started.

The rooftops of Gotham were more familiar to Tim than his own house, and he ran and clambered over them, stopping only briefly to catch a cinematic picture of a streetlight casting shadows on the cracked street. Slowly, he worked his way to the edge of the city. The tight tangle of apartment buildings and shops stacked on top of each other spread out into huge towering skyscrapers. Then, Tim pulled his hoodie off to stuff it into his bag, retracted his fangs into his gums, and pulled out his phone. Even so late at night, an Uber pulled up within fifteen minutes.

The driver was barely hanging onto her wakefulness, and after a perfunctory greeting, they lapsed into silence. Tim fiddled with his camera, flicking through the pictures he’d taken. Broken, beaten bodies. Blood splatter and unnaturally twisted limbs. They looked like crime scene pictures, partially because they were. Batman was getting more and more violent. Batman was getting less and less injured. And Jason still wasn’t coming back. Something needed to be done. Tim informed the driver of his new destination. She just nodded silently and pulled a U-turn.

“Here you are, kid,” the driver said, exhausted, and Tim thanked her quietly and slid out of the car.

He stared up at the apartment building in front of him, then checked his phone again. Surely Dick Grayson, the ward of the richest man in Gotham – possibly even the world – didn’t live here. But the address resolutely continued to match, so Tim stepped into the lobby. The only person there was a bored-looking night guard who gave him only a passing glance.

“Vampire?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Just go ahead.”

Honestly, Tim was kind of surprised the guard had bothered to talk to him at all.

The elevator had an old, battered ‘out of order’ sign, so Tim climbed up six flights of stairs. The rusted metal creaked ominously under his feet, but Tim suspected that, if anything was going to make it fall, it wouldn’t be him.

He stepped out of the stairwell on the sixth floor, trailing down the hallway until he got to a door with a shabby, mismatched ‘603’ on it. He knocked on the door.

It took less than a minute for someone to pull the door open, at 4:00 am. Almost to Tim’s surprise, it was Dick Grayson, looking haggard and worn, with eyebags so large and dark they were starting to look like real luggage. The fae aura that lingered around him tended to make it hard to tell his age, but instead of the standard vague area between eighteen and thirty-five, he was looking more like forty or sixty. His blood smelled… slow.

“Who are you and what do you want?” Grayson asked, too tired to make it forceful enough to be a demand.

“Oh- I’m, uh, I’m Timmothy Drake,” Tim said, somehow unprepared for the encounter he’d been planning for weeks, “I- but I usually go by Tim?”

“Okay. What do you want?”

“Jackdaw,” Tim blurted, “I need- Batman needs Jackdaw.”

For a split second, the exhaustion and stress in Grayson’s face flashed to soul-wrenching grief. It smoothed away an instant later, but Tim had seen it.

“I think you’re in the wrong place,” Grayson said, clearly trying for gentle confusion but landing somewhere closer to Nightwing ‘politely’ telling thugs to clear out.

“No, wait, I have proof!” Tim said, frantically pulling up his camera, “look, please, you need to come back! He needs someone!”

He flipped the camera around, the screen open to the most recent picture of the three men Tim had seen last. Bloody broken limbs. He flipped to the next one, shoving it at Nightwing-Grayson. Blood and dull eyes. Not dead, but clearly not lucid.

“Look,” Grayson said, voice hard, “kid – Drake you said? – I don’t know what you’re trying to do, but I can’t do anything about Batman.”

“Well, can’t you go back to Bruce Wayne?” Tim tried, but Grayson was already closing the door, pushing Tim back.

“Bruce Wayne can’t fix anything,” He snapped, and then the door clicked shut, leaving Tim standing alone in the hallway at four in the morning. He was shaking, hands trembling slightly around his camera. Batman needed a sideckick. Jason – Jackdaw – wasn’t coming back, Dick Grayson – Robin – wouldn’t go back. Barbara – Batgirl – was physically incapable of hero work now. That left one option. Someone new needed to take up the mantle, and there was only one person Tim could think of.

After all, if you wanted something done right, you had to do it yourself.

Tim slowly turned his camera off, took a quick look around himself, and walked down to the end of the hallway. He considered calling another Uber, but he was almost a two-hour drive from Drake Manor. There was a window at the end of the hallway, cracked and grimy, but there. It was relatively easy to pry open just a few inches, and Tim gripped his camera and bag tightly to his chest and pulled shadows and the scent of blood over him.

He dove through the cracked-open window, ears twisting and wind whipping over his fur. It was blowing against him, towards home, and Tim just had to follow the wall upwards, tilting his wings to keep the wind from dashing him against the building. In moments, he was over the building, climbing high over the city, easily several thousand feet up.

Tim had done a lot of research about different species of bat. He could choose, when he shifted, what form he wanted to take. Werewolves and Kitsunes could, too, but most didn’t know that. In his research, he’d found that the fastest horizontal flight speed of any animal was the Mexican Free-Tailed bat. With the wind in his favor, Tim could easily outstrip a car on the streets and even on most freeways.

It took him just a bit under an hour to get to Drake Manor, and the window to his room was still cracked open two inches. Tim squirmed through the gap, clawing his way onto the windowsill before fluttering to his bed and pulling the shadows away from his skin. He landed on the bed with a heavy thump, clutching his camera to his chest.

Tim quickly scanned through his pictures, making sure nothing had been corrupted by his transformation. Everything looked alright, so Tim plugged the camera into his pc and started sorting through the pictures, saving them in neatly labeled folders and printing the clearest images of each scene. Tim tapped the stack of pictures against his desk, slid a paperclip on it, and tucked it into the back of his folder. The folder was getting bigger every day.

It had started as a file of Tim’s pictures of the bats. Robin featured prominently as a bright red-and-green figure, captured in mid-air doing flips or between grapples. The dark shadow of Batman always ghosted behind him, a vague outline or a darker silhouette on the shadows. For a few pages, Robin vanished, replaced by vague pictures of a humanoid shadow.

Then Jackdaw appeared, dark blue and black and silver. He was featured just as blatantly as Robin, but instead of performances – backflips and cartwheels and somersaults – Jackdaw posed. One foot up on a short wall, bright blue lenses looking out over the city. Perched on the arm of a crane, grinning from the edge of the shadow cast by the dark shape crouched beside him. Arms folded, dark feathery cape trailing down from his elbows like real wings, a wild Robin-like grin on his face.

A few pictures of Nightwing were sprinkled through, and then pictures of Dick Grayson, Bruce Wayne, and Jason Todd. Barbara Gordon, whenever there was a shot of Batgirl. These had arrows and cramped text comparing body type, movement style, and personality. Even injuries and potential causes. There was evidence in spades.

Tim had tried posting a few of his pictures on the internet, explaining – as best as he could – the proof. He’d gotten laughed off the forum. The number of comments he’d gotten along the lines of ‘Yeah, I’m sure, do the butts match?’ were ranked in at least the hundreds. The insults, cussing out, and even death threats were higher.

Whatever the people on the Bat and Bird forums said, Tim knew he was right. Their blood even smelled the same.

Once Jackdaw vanished from the file, there were only a few pictures of Batman alone and obscured. After that, it was more and more shots of increasingly bloody scenes. Brutal beatings dished out seemingly at the drop of a hat, not even to registered Rogues. Not even to people who had really done that much. The last few pictures were carefully snapped into place, and Tim closed the file, glancing at the clock.

6:37 am, early enough that Tim wasn’t too tired, but Bruce Wayne was probably already up. Tim gathered his file, his extra folder of text evidence and his observations, and his umbrella. It was never proper, as his parents told him any time they were in the vicinity, for a vampire to leave the house without his umbrella.

It felt strange to leave through the door, especially the front door. He could fly over, but he didn’t want to risk being unable to shift back to human again.

Tim pressed the button on Wayne Manor’s entrance gate almost twenty minutes later, bouncing on the balls of his feet.

“Good morning,” said a refined British through the speaker. “Please state your name and purpose.”

“I’m Tim- uh, Timmothy Drake,” Tim said nervously, “From down the street. I need to- I need to speak with Bruce Wayne.”

“Ah, of course,” the voice said genially, “please come in.”

 There was a soft beep, and the gate swung silently open. Tim eyed it for a moment, then clutched his file closer to his chest and stepped through, starting down the winding path to the door. His tentative knock was answered immediately by a distinguished elderly man in a suit. A three-piece suit. At seven in the morning.

“Right this way, Mr. Drake,” the man – who was evidently the voice from the gate, and clearly the butler – said blandly.

Tim followed the butler down a long hallway, through a few doorways and turns, and into a rich office dominated on one side by a floor-to-ceiling window and on the other by an immense wooden desk.

“Master Bruce,” the butler said, gesturing elegantly, “Mr. Timmothy Drake to see you.”

The man at the desk – obviously Bruce Wayne – looked up, eyebrows furrowed. He looked, somehow, even more tired than Dick Grayson had, and Tim suspected he hadn’t bothered to sleep after returning home from being Batman.

“Thanks, Alfred,” Wayne said, dismissing him with a tired wave. Instead of leaving the room, the butler simply closed the door and stood at attention to the side, face frozen in a proper look of ready attention.

Tim blinked, squinting briefly at the butler. His parents used to employ a butler, before Tim was old enough that they could leave him home alone for a few weeks. Saunders had been a proper butler through and through, since the Drakes would only have the best. He was ‘Mr. Saunders’, never anything else, and Tim was always ‘Master Timmothy’. Butlers were addressed by their last name only. ‘Master’ was for children. The butler, standing with perfect posture by the wall, tipped the corners of his lips up in the faintest hint of a smile.

Tim blinked, and shook himself out of his head, turning towards Wayne, who was staring at him dully.

“Sir- Mr. Wayne,” Tim started, lifting his folders, “I know you’re Batman.”

Something flashed over Wayne’s face, too quick for Tim to read, and it was gone again an instant later.

“I have pictures-” Tim said, hurrying towards Wayne’s desk, “There’s proof. About you, and Dick Grayson as Nightwing, and Barbara Gordon, and-” He cut himself off, unsure why but for some reason unwilling to say Jason’s name.

“Jason Todd,” Wayne finished for him, something unimaginably heavy and mournful in his voice.

“…yes sir.”

“Well, let me see,” Wayne said, waving for Tim to come closer. Tim stepped up to the desk, sliding his folders onto the surface. Wayne reached for them, sliding them both closer to him. He flipped one open – the one with the pictures – and looked down at a spread of half a dozen pictures of Jackdaw in the same pose, with two pictures of Jason that looked exactly the same. The pictures were identical. Wayne hummed, something sharp and critical in his eyes.

Abruptly, Tim realized how stupid he was. Wayne didn’t have to listen to him. Wayne could rip the folders in half right there and it wouldn’t matter if Tim had duplicates. Wayne was Batman. Batman could do whatever he wanted, and anything Tim did would barely be a blip on his radar.

“What do you want?” Wayne asked bluntly.

Tim blinked, startled by the question. “What?”

“What do you want?” Wayne repeated, flipping the folder closed. “This is a lot of very damning evidence. What do you plan to do with it?”

“Make me your sidekick.” Tim blurted, too surprised to bother working up to it.

Wayne stared down at Tim, dark enough to be a glare, but offset by the deep-seated exhaustion in his eyes.

“No.”

“Yes!” Tim insisted, “Make me your sidekick, or I’ll spread this information all over the internet. Everyone will know who you are!”

“The young master raises a compelling argument,” the butler put in from his position beside the door. Wayne turned his glare on the butler, who seemed entirely unphased.

“You wouldn’t want your identity to get out,” he continued, and a tiny enigmatic smile crept onto his face.

“Alfred-” Wayne started, clearly furious, but the butler cut him off.

“Or, perhaps, you do,” he said, ruthlessly efficient, “Yourself and Master Richard’s, in which case, by all means, turn the young master away.”

“Fine,” Wayne – Batman – ground, still glaring at his butler, “You can be my sidekick.”

“Thank you, Sir,” Tim gasped, a bit dizzy from relief, “I won’t let you down!”

“If that is all for the moment, Master Timmothy,” the butler said, pulling the door open, “Master Bruce has a great many claims on his time.”

“Oh, yes, of course,” Tim agreed, “I’ll- I have to go to sleep, but I’ll be back by sunset!”

The butler lead him out the door, then stopped him in the hallway, laying a hand on his shoulder.

“Master Timmothy,” the butler said seriously, “You’ll come to find I serve a purpose far beyond a simple butler here, but that is far from the point. I know your goal in setting yourself up as Batman’s sidekick, and I know that, with all the information you’ve gathered, there is one piece you are missing.”

Tim stared up at him, puzzled. “What’s that?”

“Master Bruce is a Setsu,” the butler said, blunt, “And you are one of his soulbound.”

Tim gaped at him, his fangs flickering down into his mouth with his shock. “You mean- me?”

“This ploy of yours would not have worked any other way,” the butler said, “and likely you would not have been destined for him if you would not have pulled it. Keep that in mind, Master Timmothy.”

“Um, you- you’re Alfred, right?” Tim asked hesitantly. “Can you call me Tim?”

“Very well, Master Tim,” Alfred agreed, finally offering him a real smile.

Chapter Text

Alfred had been human once. It had been a long time ago, before the fay had been a more widely acknowledged and scientifically proven thing. He’d started as a footman in a wealthy household a few years before the end of the Wars of the Roses. He’d been far away from most of the conflict, a lowly footman in a relatively poor household.

The master of the house had been Setsu, though Alfred had only learned that much later. For the most part, it had been a relatively simple job for a relatively simple man. Nothing extravagant or exciting. And then, the new mistress had showed up.

She’d been a fay, though of what sort, Alfred would never know. She had also liked experimenting with dangerous magics. She had learned that she could force Setsu links, first between herself and Setsu, then between Setsu and other fay, and finally she had started experimenting on humans.

Alfred, as a family-less, mostly friendless unimportant footman, had been a prime target for her experiments. Unfortunately, no one had survived the experiments. Not even Alfred.

Even back then, when he’d been a low-ranked human, Alfred had been subtly petty, passive aggressive, and an expert at holding a silent, simmering grudge. He’d also had a heaping helping of what he’d later come to call ‘a Gothamite’s drive for vengeance’. He died, yes. In fact, he died in agony while fire and ice warred for dominance in his blood, ripping him apart from the inside.

Three days later, like a twisted, vengeful messiah, he’d reformed himself from the ashes of a home cremation. His skin was pale, and his blood pumped a furious green, and it took only moments for his shattered bones and charred skin to piece themselves back together and patch up the gaping, seared-away holes in his flesh.

At the time, even Alfred didn’t know what he had become. All he knew was that he had returned for vengeance, and he would have his vengeance.

The manor house had been his home for years, and Alfred knew everything about it. He knew when and where the guards patrolled and how to avoid them. He knew the servant’s passages and secret doors better than he knew his childhood home.

So, Alfred vanished into the manor before anyone saw him rise from the dead, striding through narrow corridors and vanishing through secret doors. He came upon only one other person in his search, a maid with an empty tray that had once held calming tea. Before Alfred even had time to think on it, the maid was dead, neck neatly snapped and lifeless body propped almost gently against the wall. Alfred was on his way again in a short handful of seconds, not even pausing to think about his actions.

The master bedroom had no secret doors, at least none the staff were privy to. Alfred had to go through the main door. He did just that, and found the mistress sitting up in bed, waiting for him, a tarry spell already dripping from her hands.

The instant he stepped into the room, she flung the spell at him, soulbinding him to the master of the house. In her line of thinking, this would prevent Alfred from killing either the master or mistress. After all, no one in their right mind would kill their own soulbound. Alfred was no longer in his right mind.

The mistress was dead in seconds, and the master soon afterwards. Then, the soulshock hit.

Alfred was crippled by the sensation, unable to even stand as the room was flooded with soldiers. He was undoubtedly guilty, blood still fresh on his hands, and he expected to die then and there. Instead, he was slipped away under the cover of chaos. The captain of the guards saw something in him, saw the potential in having a fay assassin, and decided to take Alfred under his wing.

For years, Alfred worked under his new master. He was a knife in the dark and a killer on a pedestal at the same time, and over the years he was trained in dozens of fields.

Finally, his new master met the same fate as the old. Not by Alfred’s hands, but by a rival house. Once Alfred had learned of that, all his vengeance came flooding back to him. By the time Alfred had finished his killing spree, there wasn’t a man in England who would raise a weapon to him, and few even dared look him in the eye.

After that, Alfred had wound up working for king Henry VII, an assassin once again. He had more blood on his hands than most anyone else, and his own blood had never lost its vengeful green glow.

Alfred had been passed down from king to king like a family heirloom, an undying relentless killer that needed only to be pointed in the right direction. He’d worked under Edward V, and then Henry VIII. Alfred had been ordered into the war with Scotland and ended up stranded far away from the mystical green crystals that gave him life. Before king Edward VI had taken the throne, he had finally died again.

Alfred’s second death, somehow, had made a greater impact on him than his first. As he slowly wasted away in a cold Scottish cave, he’d actually had a chance to consider what he’d done with his life. How many people he’d killed on the orders of tyrants and for no other reason than that they had inconvenienced the wrong man.

Alfred died regretful, died penitent, died grieving for his own long-lost moral compass that had slipped so far from its bearings it was now thoroughly unrecognizable. He woke the next morning a changed man.

A new kind of fay emerged from the cave Alfred had crawled into to die. His blood was no longer green, but brass. His eyes were back to an almost human brown that, in just the right light, revealed itself as truly gold. Even his hair – which had been black still, since he kept the form of the young man he’d been so long ago – had gone silver. Not the gray of stress or old age, but silver, shining like a polished signet ring.

Most notable to him, though no one else could see it, was that Alfred now had wings. Not like the angel wings he saw in paintings or stained glass or Satan’s webbed bat-like wings. Something made of shimmering light, like broken shards of stained glass, that emerged from his shoulders and splayed around him like a sunburst.

Alfred had made a decision as he died in that cave, a decision that directed the way he lived his life ever since. He was still passive-aggressive and subtly petty. He was still driven to vengeance sometimes, but only when it was truly called for. Avenging the weak, the helpless, and the innocent, killing only as a last resort, only people who truly deserved to die. He wasn’t against spilling blood – his life had been nothing but blood for decades – but now he would only kill with a purpose.  

After wandering around almost aimlessly for the better part of a year, Alfred ran into a Setsu in Scotland. In fact, Alfred ran into his Setsu in Scotland. Instead of returning to England – where by that point Edward VI had been crowned – Alfred settled down with his Scottish Setsu, his history and fame left behind in England, and tried to focus on living a simple life again.

Alfred held onto his mostly peaceful life for as long as he could possibly manage, gripping with his fingertips until Mary, Queen of Scots came back from France over a decade later. Alfred’s Setsu, it turned out, was a devout Catholic and an avid supporter of queen Mary, and the three of them – Alfred, his Setsu, and the werewolf that had been there before Alfred – quickly became embroiled in Scottish and religious politics.

It ended with them being sent as part of a royal delegation to France and getting caught in the thick of French wars of religion. The werewolf died within the year, and Alfred’s Setsu was devastated by the loss. With Alfred still supporting him, the Setsu lasted three more years before dying in an attempt to get back to Scotland.

Once again, Alfred found himself alone and wandering a mostly unknown country. He paused only long enough to make sure everyone who’d had a hand in his Setsu’s death got what they deserved before vanishing to a remote location, as far from the fighting as he could manage. He joined a troupe of actors, following the inclinations of a long distant innocent human footman who had always loved a good play. It was on the stage, thirty years later, that he ran into yet another of his Setsu.

Alfred’s life continued like that in a perpetual cycle. He lived peaceful and wandering for as long as he could manage. Then, a Setsu popped up with Alfred’s handwriting on his skin, and Alfred was sucked into another whirlwind of action – he saw everything from barbed tongues to actual battlefields – before his Setsu and other soulbound eventually died and Alfred vanished into anonymity again. He bounced around different countries and rubbed shoulders with everyone from royalty to beggars.

In all his travels, Alfred never stopped picking up information. He was an assassin, yes, but he was also a doctor, a sailor, a translator, diplomat, soldier, weaponsmith, secretary, veterinarian, and even once a florist. Along with learning more human skills, Alfred figured out how to use his more magical abilities.

No blade could pierce his skin and he was faster, stronger, and quicker witted, but that was just the basics. He knew where his Setsu and soulbound were at any given moment and always knew the exact information or assistance they’d need next. He knew things his Setsu had forgotten, knew secrets he’d never even met the keepers of, and could tell what sort of toxins were in someone’s blood with only a glance.

Once, Alfred and his Setsu were out walking on the street together and Alfred caught sight of a woman standing by an open doorway. He knew in a glance that she was a werewolf, and knew before his Setsu even looked up that her handwriting was somewhere on his skin. He knew she had been married, but wasn’t anymore. He knew the first thing she’d say to his Setsu was to try to scam him. He was right.

He was always right.

Eventually, that Setsu and the werewolf he met that day died, the same as every one had before. Alfred never stopped being right.

He made his way to America and almost immediately got caught up in the Mexican War of Independence. He never stopped being right. He emerged on the other side of the Treaty of Cordoba down a Setsu and a clan of soulbound. He ‘retired’ again, settling somewhere simple and out of the way. He never stopped being right.

Alfred was swept up again shortly before Texas started their own revolution. He predicted in the beginning rumbles of conflict that they’d get out on top, even though the odds were stacked almost insurmountably against them. He never stopped being right. His Setsu survived that conflict, fortunately, and the remainder of the clan settled down together. Alfred naturally fell back into an vaguely footman-like role, as was almost his tradition.

The United States of America picked up new territories faster than Alfred picked up Setsu, and by the time his current one was gone, America was almost to its full size. Then, the issue of slavery came to a head. Less than a year before the start of the Civil War, Alfred found himself soulbound to a Setsu with the darkest skin he’d ever seen. Alfred told his Setsu that, eventually, America would see reason. He told his Setsu’s soulbound that the Setsu herself wouldn’t be there to witness it. He never stopped being right.

Alfred caught a boat back to England almost before the signatures on the thirteenth amendment were dry. His Setsu was dead, and the majority of the clan were shattered with soulshock. Alfred stayed to see it through, and now he was done. He was going home.

Home wasn’t the same anymore, which he’d known before arriving, but it was still a shock. There was a train running underground and true science was being spread.

Alfred settled down to learn about engines and factories and stayed solitary until the turn of the century. He met an industrious, no-nonsense woman who took his whole recited backstory with little more than a raised eyebrow and an urging to eat more, since he was ‘so skinny you could pass for a twig’.

She had a whole pack of werewolves that begged at her door like puppies. Only the alpha was soulbound, but that didn’t stop the rest of them from lingering. Fay were permitted if not appreciated those days, and Alfred melded with the group with nary a raised hackle in sight. There was a trio of fae there, too, something rare to see in human society, and a sphinx who engaged Alfred in snappy wordplay in three different languages. It was, Alfred thinks, the closest he'd come to what he’d been waiting for.

He didn’t know what he was waiting for at the time. He knew only that it was coming. It may be ten years, may be a hundred, may even be a thousand. His life was building up to one crucial moment, one crucial Setsu, one crucial family, and once he found it, that would be the end of the constant cycle. He never stopped being right.

A mere fourteen years after meeting the industrious Setsu and her clan, war broke out on a global scale. The War to End all Wars, it was called. Every one of Alfred’s clan survived the war, though the same couldn’t be said for the werewolf pack and the fae court. The war ended only four years later, and there was a tense air of anticipation that only Alfred could feel.

“Another one is coming,” he told his Setsu, almost on reflex. “Be ready.”

She was. They were. When World War Two hit, they were prepared. The werewolf and the fae were conscripted and died anyway. Something broke in the Setsu, partly soulshock partly old-fashioned grief. She was old by then, old enough that the death of only one of her soulbound might have lead to fatal heartbreak. Somehow, she survived. She clung to life like Alfred clung to his peace in peacetimes, and Alfred tried something very, very dangerous.

He reached into the heart of his power and called for it to change. To shape itself to his will. The most terrifying part was that it worked. Something inside him changed, and he could tell even the last resting place of the werewolf and fae. He reached out and pulled, demanding their souls come back, reconnect to the world. It worked and it didn’t. Alfred stopped, gave up, sure that if anything actually worked, all he would receive was horror. He never stopped being right.

Finally, the Setsu died of age and heartache. Alfred said his last goodbyes to the sphinx and vanished into the woodwork again. He tried to bury himself in his familiar routines, falling back on trade schools and internships. He learned half a dozen new trades, losing himself in the overwhelming rush of information.

Eventually, Alfred found himself in America again, and his Setsu was a vicious, angry man, and Alfred had forgotten, even in his long life, that not everyone was honest and fair and just with their vengeance. Alfred knew how to use a gun. He was an expert marksman with a bow and a crossbow, but a sniper rifle was a decent jump from that. Still, he would do most anything for his Setsu. A bullet through the throat, a bullet through the skull. And then, later, the knowledge of who he’d killed.

The president of the United States. Despite all his experience, Alfred had never killed a king before. This wasn’t quite the same, but it was close. Very close.

Acting on instinct, Alfred reached into his power and pulled, forcibly snapping his soulbond. That- that was his oath. The oath he’d sworn to himself had been broken. Shattered like a dropped plate, and it wasn’t even his fault.

Alfred didn’t know how long he was dazed and soulshocked. His power flickered in and out in waves, there one moment and gone the next. He tore at his own skin and bled for the first time in centuries, bled brass and green and even red. His eyes were brown, and the world was gray. His eyes were gold, and the world was too bright to see. His eyes were green, and the world was green.

Finally, after an indeterminate amount of time, Alfred stood. He was different. Changed. Again, something intrinsic to himself had shifted. His silver hair was peppered with black, and his eyes were an almost natural green. His blood was more copper than brass. His oath had changed.

The gun still wasn’t familiar in his hand, but it was the weapon for the job. The Setsu was dead the same day as the president. No one would know it had been Alfred. He’d never stopped being right, but that didn’t make him all-knowing.

Alfred went back to acting. He flung himself onto the stage and worked his emotions out through the characters he played. In his own time, he learned to shoot. He took up a sniper’s rifle and didn’t put it down until the bullets went exactly where he told them to.

And then… and then he met the Waynes. They showed up at the theater, watched from the boxes that only the truly rich could get, not simply wealthy or upper middle class. Alfred figured they would be typical rich folk, sure in their own capabilities, confident in their old money to keep them afloat.

He was wrong.

They wanted a butler. Their description of ‘butler’ read more like an entire serving staff. Chauffeur, cook, nanny, even trained security. Proficient in firearms and babysitting. Alfred was probably the only person in the world who was entirely qualified. Despite himself, he applied. He assumed he’d be discarded for a more high-society, better connected applicant, someone with skills that could actually be pinned down and examined.

He was wrong.

 Alfred showed up to work for them, the whole time feeling sharp déjà vu to what he now considered his first life. It would be a simple in-between job, until he found his next Setsu and went haring off after them. He was sure that even their young child – Bruce; curious and intrigued by the world around him, but still young and too innocent – wouldn’t be much of an obstacle.

He. Was. Wrong.

Chapter Text

As far as Stephanie knew, there wasn’t a more polluted section of coast than the waters of the Gotham harbor. On a good day, it had traces of Fear Toxin, Joker Venom, and sometimes the plant pheromones Ivy was messing with. On the other hand, Stephanie reasoned with herself, it couldn’t be much worse than the air in Gotham.

Still, there was something about the rippling river that just looked filthy. Stephanie peered down at it from her position on the edge of a short cliff. Finger River sloshed at the stone beneath her, dark and murky. Stephanie took a deep breath and slowly let it out. Okay. She had practiced this. She could do this. Now or never.

Stephanie shoved herself off the cliff.

She hit the water in a shower of bubbles, crashing through the surface and sinking into the murky water. Her chest ached for air, but Stephanie ignored it. Instead of kicking towards the surface, she turned downwards.

The water was dark, but her lungs quickly stopped screaming. She drank in oxygen from the water around her, sliding easily through the gentle darkness of the river. When she opened her mouth, it wasn’t to breathe. It was to sing. Underwater, her voice was a dozen voices. She was a choir on her own, trilling and thrumming and shifting with the current.

Music came back to her in images. Not like seeing, but simply knowing. She knew there was a boulder there in front of her, and she twirled around it with barely a flick of her tail. She knew there were fish swimming around her, and she marveled briefly at the fact that anything actually lived down here.

Stephanie passed under a bridge, only aware of it in the shadow of struts and beams on her intuition, the way it changed the current and made her song echo and bounce. That, finally, got her back on track. If she remembered correctly, she was in the harbor between Somerset and Burnley. She still needed to go under Sprang Bridge to get to Ward Channel, and then she’d have to skirt Cape Carmine and head north some more.

It was far easier to swim with a proper tail instead of flapping human legs in the water. Stephanie made it to the bridge in record time, then cautiously surfaced. Yeah, she was definitely at Sprang Bridge. Either that or she’d been swimming the wrong way, but the bridge above her didn’t have the length to be Trigate or the reinforcements to be Westward.

Stephanie sank back under the surface, sticking close to the wall on her left as she darted towards Cape Carmine. It was a long swim. Sure, it was a lot faster – and safer – for Stephanie to swim around Gotham Uptown than to try to cut across it, but it still wasn’t fast. It was also exhausting. She hadn’t anticipated how much work it would be to synchronize herself to the current and how hard it would be to keep singing the whole time.

By the time Stephanie had dragged herself out of the water in the Diamond District, her throat ached and her whole body was a trembling mess. She flopped inelegantly onto the ground, filling her lungs with air and letting her gills sink back into her sides. Maybe next time she’d just swim the short way. Surely just being in the water around Arkham shouldn’t be that bad.

Finally, Stephanie dragged herself upright into a vague sitting position. It was hard to actually sit up when you had a hulking tail that didn’t bend the way legs did, but she managed. Once she was sitting, Stephanie took a deep breath and held it, letting the air seethe in her chest.

Pins and needles washed over her as scales shrank away, replaced by the familiar thick fabric of her violently purple hoodie. Her tail split in half, shrinking down into a pair of legs clad in grey cargo pants and thick-soled purple boots. Stephanie’s overly large mouth shrank, sharp fangs shifting into square-shaped human teeth. Her cloth mask appeared on her face, settling over completely human ears, mouth, and nose.

Stephanie stretched, popping pretty much all her joints. She flexed her jaw and cracked her knuckles, then clambered to her feet and slid her sleeve back a bit to check her watch. Technically, it wasn’t hers – she’d stolen it from a flouncy Bristol brat she’d caught in East End a few months ago – but it was waterproof and sturdy, and no one had ever asked for it back, so it might as well have been. Fortunately, she still had some time before the ‘meeting’ was going to go down. Enough time, hopefully, to get into a good place to watch from.

There was a building with an intact fire escape right next to her, and Stephanie easily clattered up onto the roof. She wasn’t familiar with the Diamond District – it was run by a different mob than she was used to, and so she’d steered clear of it – but she had a map on her phone, and she knew how to improvise.

She made it to a proper perch with only two minutes to spare and hunkered down into the shadows. She could see a broad wedge of the office, the door and the wall it was set in, but not the desk. She’d done a sweep before picking a perch and she knew there was no one in it yet.

Just as Stephanie was starting to get bored, the door she could see swung open. Two people stepped through, one she didn’t recognize and one that was clearly her dad in a stupid outfit. Not that she was really one to judge on the professionalism of dramatic costumes, but at least hers wasn’t orange.

“-don’t think you’re intruding on enough territories already?” the unknown man said, leaning casually against the desk.

“I’m not intruding on anything,” Stephanie’s dad snapped, and yep, he hadn’t even tried to disguise his voice or anything. It was just… him.

“Well, so long as you’re in denial,” the stranger muttered, “sure, why not.”

“So you’ll get me the shipment?” her dad, Cluemaster, demanded.

“Yeah, I can get you some fear toxin,” the stranger sighed.

What. What?! Stephanie clamped a hand over her mouth, muffling her startled gasp. Sure, she’d come to expect a lot of nefarious activity and illegal dealings from her dad, but she hadn’t been prepared for this. Fear toxin? Why?

Stephanie cast her gaze skyward in a dramatic plea to whatever deities might be there. Fear toxin? Was copycatting one Rogue not enough? Now he wanted to steal Scarecrow’s – the guy who was literally obsessed with causing fear – shtick?

“What are you doing here?”

Stephanie almost jumped out of her skin, whirling towards the voice. As she went, she automatically snagged a piece of broken masonry that had chipped off the wall she was sitting on.

“Ugh,” muttered the person behind her – now in front of her, after receiving a brick to the face. He lifted a hand to his nose, which was spectacularly broken, and uttered a slurred oath.

Even in the dim lighting, now that Stephanie actually looked, she recognized that stupid yellow costume. The fluttery black cape with the yellow underside, the sleek black helmet and yellow visor. The brick dropped out of her hand, clattering loudly to the roof and Stephanie frantically scanned the darkness around them. Batman wouldn’t be far behind Finch. Unlike some people’s dads, Batman was prone to show up the literal second anything happened to Finch. Stephanie was so, so screwed.

“Hey, wait!” Finch called, but Stephanie was gone. If the rumors were right and Batman was actually a vampire, then he’d be able to fly after her if she was anywhere on land. That meant Stephanie had to get to water, and she had to get to water now.

Stephanie was barely down the side of the building before there was an actual physical bat following her. She only knew it was there because could hear the wingbeats and the occasional click of echolocation, but she knew it was getting closer, and fast.

Stephanie threw caution to the wind and sprinted down the street. Her purple cape billowed behind her, practically a neon spotlight declaring her position.

Wings beat over her and the bat chittered, swooping down towards her. Joke was on him, though, because from the fire escape to a convenient cliffside was only a block and a half.

Stephanie didn’t even slow down as the road ended abruptly beneath her. She just shoved off the cliff and flung herself into a perfect swan dive, tail growing and scales patterning her skin even as she fell.

Whatever the bat did was drowned out by the splash as Stephanie hit the water, and she immediately dove down to the bottom of the bay. She was fine. She’d made it.

Stephanie took a long moment to herself, curled into a little ball with Gotham’s polluted water all around her. She flicked water over her gills and pretended it was at all as soothing as taking a deep breath. Everything was fine.

Glad that she’d bothered to memorize the water map going the other direction, Stephanie started heading west. Her nerves felt like they’d been rubbed raw, and she’d decided she’d rather swim past Arkham Island than go the long way around Cape Carmine.

It was a quiet trip, just Stephanie, her song, and the water. She passed under the shadow of two bridges – one of which she knew was the Trigate Bridge that led to Bristol, the other she was pretty sure didn’t get a fancy name – and then she was in the strait that separated Burnley and Arkham Island.

It was fine. Everything was fine, and Stephanie practically shot through the water. She swam all the way to East Side, then laboriously dragged herself out of the water, half-dangling over the ledge even as she shifted back into a humanoid form. She took a moment to tie her cape into a haphazard knapsack and tuck her mask, goggles, and makeshift utility belt into it before dragging herself to her feet and starting down the road.

“Hello!”

If Stephanie’d had a brick in hand, she probably would have hit this guy directly in the face, too. Instead, she punched him. Like, hard enough to maybe break his nose.

“Owww,” the guy whined, holding his nose, “Would you stop that!”

“What do you want?” Stephanie demanded, scowling at the kid. Even in Somerset, Stephanie knew better than to trust literally anyone that approached her after nightfall. Cops, bums, even kids. She didn’t discriminate.

“Geeze, I just wanted to say hi,” the kid grumbled, gingerly nudging his nose.

“You’re wearing sunglasses at night,” Stephanie hissed, “Either you’re a jerk, a vampire, or both, and if you don’t leave me alone, I can and will stab you.”

“Okay, okay, sorry,” the kid huffed, dropping his hands and turning away to flounce down the street. Like, actually flounce. He looked like a character from her mom’s ridiculous British TV shows.

And… actually. His clothes looked way too nice for anyone in East End. Heck, for anyone in Somerset.

“Did you, like, get lost on your way to a dinner party?” Stephanie asked despite herself.

“What?”

“You look like you walked out a menswear add,” Stephanie scoffed, “seriously, what are you doing here, kid?”

“It’s-” the kid looked down at his suit, then his head shot back up, “Wait, did you call me ‘kid’!?”

“Yeah, you’re like, what, twelve? At best?”

“I’m fifteen!” the kid snapped.

Stephanie blinked. “I’m fifteen.”

“That’s irrelevant!”

“Okay, rude. I think I’m very relevant.”

“That is not what I meant!”

“Yeah, yeah. Don’t get yourself mugged on your way home, Bristol Bit-”

The rest of Stephanie’s sentence was choked off as her gaze caught on the figure standing behind the overdressed kid. There was no mistaking the terrifying white lenses that stared into her soul or the way the vaguely humanoid upper body turned into liquid shadow where it should have had a waist.

“Stephanie Brown?” The Batman himself asked, and oh Stars his voice was even more terrifying than Stephanie had been led to believe and she was one hundred percent going to die here.

“Leave me alone, I didn’t even know it was Finch!”

And Stephanie booked it again.

She had hearing just sharp enough to catch the start of the kid’s sentence – “Isn’t that what-” – before she whipped around a corner and bolted down another dark street.

Batman, being Batman, spontaneously manifested in front of her, and Stephanie threw herself into a picture-perfect baseball slide, uncaring of the filth she was undoubtedly getting all over her boots and pants. She scrambled up, trying to reverse direction, but the overdressed kid from before was standing right behind her and apparently had no qualms against bodily tackling Stephanie to the pavement.

Despite his size, he was both unexpectedly strong and heavy. No matter how Stephanie squirmed or wriggled, the kid would not be dislodged. Not until Batman reached over both of them, grabbed the kid’s shoulder, and pulled him neatly to his feet.

Stephanie lay frozen on the ground, blinking stupidly at the clawed hand Batman was offering her.

“…what?”

“Would you like help up?” Batman asked, hand not even wavering.

“You’re not… mad?”

“Of course not,” Batman returned immediately. “You acted with admirable reflexes and intuition. Finch should have known better than to sneak up on someone like that, especially considering his own training.”

Despite herself, Stephanie wanted to trust Batman. Like, yeah, he was infamous for totally destroying anyone who even looked at his birds, but also… Well, Stephanie had practically been raised on stories of Batman.

Tentatively, already berating herself for her own foolishness, Stephanie placed her hand in Batman’s. The clawed hand closed around hers, and for an instant Stephanie expected him to squeeze until her fingers broke, but no. He just pulled her to her feet, slipping his hand out of hers once she was standing.

“You alright there?” the kid asked. “B can be a bit… much.”

“What?”

“How about I walk you home,” the kid suggested. “I’m Tim, by the way.”

“Stephanie,” Stephanie answered automatically, even though Batman had literally said her name already. Wait. “How did you-” But Batman was gone. Naturally. Obviously.

“Facial recognition software,” Tim said cheerfully. “And a huge helping of intuition.”

“Intuition?”

“Yeah, Alfred can like, sense B’s soulbound.”

“Soulbound,” Stephanie repeated blankly.

“Yeah, can’t you feel the bond?”

Despite herself, Stephanie actually checked. Sure enough, there it was, nestled in the back of her head next to the idle music and impression of scales. A net, looped loosely around her, that tied her back to… something. She couldn’t say exactly what, but the first descriptor that came to mind was ‘friend shaped,’ so she went with that. She was tied to something friend shaped now. Oh, Stars. The thing was Batman. Batman was friend shaped.

“Yeah, I feel that,” Tim said, studying Stephanie’s face like he could read the secrets of the universe from her expression.

“I thought he was a vampire,” Stephanie said weakly.

“Nah, he’s Setsu,” Tim laughed, “I don’t think he could handle being a vampire.”

“But… the bat…”

“Yeah, that was me.” Tim flashed a grin at Stephanie, revealing long sharp fangs. “Hurts like the devil to shift with an injury, but it’s not too bad.”

“You- you’re Finch. Your nose-! Oh, Stars, I punched you.”

Tim-Finch just shrugged. “It’ll heal.”

Stephanie needed to sit down. Fortunately, there was a convenient curb right next to her. Stephanie dropped onto the pavement and buried her face in her hands.

“Mood,” Tim said, settling onto the curb next to her. “Give it a few days, you’ll feel better.”

Chapter Text

When Damian was eight years old, he met a wolf with the shape of a man. His mind was wild, feral and bestial, but he understood the orders given him. He understood, but never obeyed. Blue eyes flashed towards Damian when anything was demanded of him, and Damian knew that his job was only to nod, or repeat the order, and the wolf would comply.

Damian didn’t know why. All he knew was that the wolf listened only to him, and so they had to spend their days together. They trained together, Damian watching the wolf as the wolf watched him. Damian was weaker than the wolf, but at the same time, the wolf was weaker than him. If they were to fight, Damian would lose. Despite that, Damian knew that even when he lost, he would live.

No matter what Damian said, no matter what the instructors or even Grandfather said, the wolf would not kill. He had the teeth for it, the deadly strength and hunger. Damian had seen fury in his eyes, had seen him deal what would have been a killing blow to a training form or a man’s leg, but never the throat.

Once, when the wolf refused to kill, Damian had been called forward to end the fight properly. He had done so with efficiency and precision. The wolf had watched him with sharp blue eyes, and for the first time in his life, Damian had not felt proud of the blood on his sword.

The wolf was something of a role model to Damian. He was strong and deadly and perfectly precise with how he used his strength. His strict obedience was tempered by a wild sort of intelligence and an unmistakable bearing of leadership. He was vicious when slighted, ruthlessly efficient in a fight, but had been heartbreakingly gentle with the litter of abandoned kittens Damian had found being cared for by one of the mousers.

When the wolf came to him one night when the moon was round and bright, Damian had readily climbed on his back. The wolf carried him easily, powerful muscles working under thick black fur that made Damian feel as if he was riding a living shadow. And then they were out under the moonlight, and Grandfather was standing before them.

Mother emerged from behind Grandfather, green eyes sharp. “Come away, Damian.”

Damian showed none of his confusion on his face, only slipped soundlessly from the wolf’s shoulders and followed Mother out of the courtyard. The door clicked behind them, and screams shredded the silence of the night. Damian did not physically start, but he hesitated in his careful pace, turning to see green light spilling under the crack in the door.

“Ignore it,” Mother ordered, and Damian obeyed. He followed Mother all the way back to his room, returning to bed at her command.

The next morning, the wolf was gone.

There was something missing after that. The shadows in Nanda Parbat seemed darker, the moonlight colder. Damian returned to his training schedule, what he had been working on before the wolf showed up, and even though something felt misaligned inside him, everything almost returned to normal.

Then, Damian stepped into a ring with a monster wearing the wolf’s face.

The bone structure was the same, the way his hair fell and the stance as he held his sword. But the monster was huge, much more powerfully built than the wolf had ever been, and his eyes were the same vengeful green as Grandfather’s, without a drop of compassion left in them.

Damian suspected that, if this monster were to come across a litter of abandoned kittens, little would remain when it was done but scraps of bloody fur.

They were to fight, as Grandfather instructed. Damian watched the monster as the monster watched him, and when Grandfather ordered them to clash, Damian thought he might have seen a flash of the wolf under the monster’s green eyes.

In battle, there was no time for hesitation.

Damian knew that the wolf would never harm him, but this monster was not the wolf, and so Damian took the opening he had been granted and attacked.

It did him no good. The monster was faster, stronger, better than him. Usually, with opponents so large it was easy for Damian to slip inside their reach, but the monster fended off every distraction and inward dodge that Damian attempted, and in the end, Damian ended up on the ground, razor-sharp golden sword at his throat.

Something like confusion flickered through the monster’s eyes, a brief disruption of the furious bloodlust, but before he could do anything, Grandfather dismissed him.

“That was a shameful performance, Damian.”

After that, Damian never saw the monster again. Months passed, two years passed, and Damian almost forgot about the wolf and the monster with its face. There was no time for childish dreams, not with all the expectations resting on him now that Mother’s pet project had fallen through.

In his dreams, though, Damian ran with a bright-toothed, blue-eyed shadow. Sometimes he was running through sparsely lit twisting streets. Sometimes, he jumped across the rooftops of an unfamiliar city. He raced the shadow through polished steel corridors or sprinted across open fields of dusty yellow-gray earth.

The dreams always started the same. A sharp howl in the darkness and Damian was aware, sitting up somewhere – cobblestones, gravel, packed dirt – and finding himself face to face with two spots of haunting blue in the dark. Tonight, he sat up on the floor of an empty room, the walls draped with green and the floor thick sand. Shadows writhed and twisted around the epicenter of blue eyes, and Damian sprang to his feet.

He felt oddly heavy in this dream. Usually, in the Running Dreams, he was light as a feather and felt no fatigue.

Before Damian had time to think on it, the shadow was racing away from him. Damian followed.

They ran through the halls of Nanda Parbat, competing for speed and for silence and for sharp, feral joy. Darkness twined around Damian and the shadow’s eyes flashed in the dull golden light. With every step, power and strength flowing through Damian. Finally came the lightness and easiness he had come to expect from these dreams. His steps were predetermined, happening before he’d even considered where to put his foot, and the shadows curled around him like an old friend.

The two of them swirled around a corner in a rush of adrenaline and darkness. There was a door at the end of the hallway. It flew open in front of them and Damian and the shadow flowed through without a second of hesitation. The dream changed, and they were running along a dark mountain path, still surefooted as mountain goats.

Moonlight fell over them in flashing slices, cut off by steady wingbeats. Damian spared a single glance upward to see what sort of bat was flying over them tonight.

It was hard to pick out specific shapes and colors in the uncertain darkness, but the bat was huge, with a snout-like nose and something metallic wrapped around its chest.

A shape loomed out of the darkness in front of them, a ship or plane of some sort. The door was resting open, revealing a dimly-lit interior, and Damian and the shadow cut towards it like creatures of pure wind. They melted through the door together, and then everything stopped.

All the unnatural grace and weightlessness of the dream melted away like a nightmare, and Damian almost stumbled, barely catching himself as he skidded to a stop feeling clumsy and unbalanced. Artificial lights flared on around him, illuminating the belly of an aircraft made of black metal. The shadow that had run at his side drew away, edges disconnecting from what remained of the natural darkness and condensing into the form of a small Asian woman.

“Hello,” the woman said, voice soft but piercing.

Damian hesitated for a moment too long, struggling to make the transition between dream and reality. Behind him, the door clanged shut.

There was another person there when Damian turned, and for a brief instant, Damian thought it was the wolf. But this man stood taller than the wolf and shorter than the monster. His hair curled more and his skin was just slightly darker. A stranger, but a heartachingly familiar one. Not that Damian was going to let that stop him.

“We mean you no harm, little chick,” the stranger said, and his eyes flashed with magic.

Damian’s hand flickered towards his side, but he didn’t have his swords with him. He hadn’t bothered to search for them when he thought he was dreaming.

“You are fae,” Damian said, curling his hands into fists instead, lifting onto the balls of his feet. There were two opponents now, almost perfectly flanking him. They were dangerous opponents, both clearly magical though Damian’s Draugr blood made him immune to most hostile Fay magic, and Damian would have to tread carefully if he was going to survive.

“I am,” the fae admitted easily, because he could do nothing else. “Please don’t attack anyone, chick. We don’t want to hurt you, but we will defend ourselves.”

“What do you want with me?” Damian demanded, carefully beginning to edge away from the Fae, trying to get both threats in his sightline.

“We want you to meet your dad.”

Damian’s attention lapsed for an instant, and his raised fists dropped an inch.

“I have not yet progressed to my father’s standards,” Damian said cautiously, unsure what angle these strangers were trying for. He had them both in line of sight now, and he watched them exchange unreadable looks.

“He still wants to meet you,” the fae said, “He doesn’t care how good you are yet, he just wants to see you.”

A door opens behind him, and Damian chances a half-glance over his shoulder. Another familiar stranger, this one with the right height and skin tone for the monster, but with bright blue eyes like the wolf.

“Pup?”

They had him surrounded on three different sides, and Damian went over the fae’s words in his head, trying to figure out the trick. The trap. With fae, there was always a trap.

“Pup?” the familiar stranger said again, “what’s wrong?”

The shadow woman made several unfamiliar hand signs at the stranger. Sign language, or some form of military shorthand.

“Don’t you recognize me?” the stranger said, willingly stepping around Damian to be in his line of sight. He’d left the door open behind him.

Damian spun on his heel and bolted for the door.

He had barely taken two steps when a heavy weight bowled him over. Instead of letting him hit the ground headfirst, whatever had run into Damian grabbed him and twisted, making them both land on their sides. Then, they rolled over to cage Damian with their weight.

Damian was strong and skilled. He could fight a man twice his size and come out on top. He was still only ten years old, though, and there was very little he could do against a wolf the size of a pony draped over his chest.

The wolf – and it couldn’t be the wolf, not so much larger than Damian had remembered – tipped its head to look at Damian with painfully familiar blue eyes. It made a little sound, an ‘are you sure’ sort of sound that Damian had heard a dozen times a day back when he had lived as the shadow of a human-shaped wolf.

“Who are you?” Damian breathed, his voice shaking despite his best efforts to keep it steady.

“Jason?” the fae asked, “You alright there?”

The werewolf huffed, blowing dog-breath into Damian’s face, and set his giant head on top of Damian’s shoulder. Damian could see him roll his eyes and poke his tongue out of his mouth. A familiar gesture, something the wolf did to show his scorn for an instructor or order.

“Jason, you can’t just lie on top of him,” the fae said, exasperated, “At least shift into human form so you can talk to him.”

The werewolf flattened his ears to the side, digging his chin deeper into Damian’s shoulder, and Damian’s heart froze in his chest. That was not a canine expression. That was a sign of a petulant cat, and not a motion wolves ever did. Except the wolf, who had a mess of instincts that fit a cat or bird better than a wolf.

“Shadow?” Damian asked in League dialect, the name he had used in the few and far between moments when he and the wolf were alone together.

The werewolf – the wolf that Damian had missed for two years – grunted in a way Damian had learned to interpret as ‘obviously’.

Damian tentatively slid his arms out from underneath the wolf and snaked them around his neck. His hands sank into soft black fur, and the wolf – Shadow, Jason, apparently – happily started licking his face.

“Okay, I’m glad we’ve got the Baby Bat, but do we really have to do this now?” a new voice asked. Damian would have considered the newcomer a potential threat, but there was no way the wolf would let anything even slightly threatening anywhere close to Damian. Not if he could help it.

“Do you have a better time you’d like to suggest?” And that- that voice was important.

Damian had learned to listen to his instincts, and to tell natural from supernatural, and there was a part of him with green blood and no heartbeat that sat up and paid attention when that low, smooth voice spoke up.

Regretfully, Damian pushed the wolf’s snout away from him, trying once again to sit up. This time, the wolf let him, clambering back to allow Damian to lever himself smoothly to his feet.

Before him there stood a man who was taller than Jason, built of pure muscle but carrying himself with inhuman grace. He was dressed casually, but his bearing was that of a man like Grandfather, who commanded respect in every situation. There were scars over his arms, marks from wounds that were likely older than Damian. Damian recognized himself in the man’s jawline and the shape of his shoulders, in the sharp look in his eyes and the ready way he carried himself even among allies. There was only one person this man could be.

“It is an honor to greet you, Father,” Damian said, bowing properly to a commanding superior.

A moment later, a hand closed around Damian’s shoulder to prevent him from falling over in shock. There was a green part of him that lived in his chest and never ceased to be hungry, chewing at his spine and clawing at his ribs. It was only silent when he was fighting, only settled after he killed. Damian had been trained to always pay attention to it, to keep the instincts from the green part of him always in the back of his mind. Now… now it was gone.

Or, well, not gone. It had just… stopped. Stopped clawing at him, stopped tearing him apart from the inside, stopped demanding blood and death and victory.

“It’s my honor, really,” Father said, and something warm and living beat in Damian’s chest, waves of fondness and joy lapping at his heart. The green finally tucked its claws away and curled around the thread of power that had appeared inside him, stretching off towards what could only be Father’s soul.

Setsu, Mother had called him, and Damian hadn’t understood. He couldn’t have understood this without feeling it. It felt… safe.