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The first day it was just plain sugar cookies. Bruce noticed that Jason was up late at night, busily pulling a rack of cookies out of the oven, each one a perfect little round shape.
“Hey, sport,” he said carefully. “Felt like baking today, huh?”
“Mmhm,” Jason’s acknowledging grunt was almost nonchalant. His son's eyes were glowing faintly red, a sure sign that all was not well in the Temple of Jason.
Bruce sat down at the breakfast bar and watched as Jason carefully transferred the cookies onto a cooling rack, wondering if there was any possible way to bring up the subject hanging in the room without awkwardness. Probably not, Bruce thought ruefully. He might be the personification of Nemesis on Earth while his mother slept in the waters of the Lethe to keep the world safe from her mad vengeance for killing her mortal lover and husband, but his divine gifts only helped him when there was an injustice to be righted. It didn’t help him deal with kids, which made his decision to adopt so many mildly bewildering, even to him.
“No one is angry at you, you know,” Bruce said gently. “For what happened.”
Jason reddened, stacking more cookies with abrupt movements. If you watched carefully, you could see the telltale long black claws coalescing from Jason’s fingertips like tiny shards of night. The red rings around his irises were briefly neon bright. Bruce knew without checking he’d be fever-hot to the touch.
“We aren’t, Jay,” Bruce insisted. “Hey, look at me,” he gently maneuvered the boy so he could look him in his glowing red eyes. “We really aren’t. Hellhounds are powerfully territorial of their space. Of course you reacted badly when you sensed something moving around the property. Nothing burned down and no one got hurt. You’re not fully in control of your instincts yet and that’s fine. That’s normal for a boy your age.”
Jason looked away. “There was something there, B,” he mumbled.
“I daresay there was,” Bruce replied gently. “I never said your instincts were wrong. I’m also pretty sure whoever or whatever it was high tailed it out of the country after seeing a full shifted Hellhound coming for it, wreathed in flames. So, well done for protecting the place, kiddo. I appreciate it.”
For some reason, that made Jason redden more, looking down at his rack of cooling cookies despondently. “I shouldn’t have done that.”
“Hey, I just said it’s fine, Jay,” Bruce moved around to give his too-hot son a hug, wings made of night and vengeance briefly manifesting to wrap around him along with Bruce’s arms. It was like being wrapped in a starry night sky. “You’re not in full control of your powers yet, that’s all. That’s what you’re here to learn, right?”
The boy nodded. “Everyone who's here… belongs here, right? Everyone who comes here is welcome, no matter what they are?”
“Right. So don’t worry about it. These things happen. At least you haven’t swooped down on some poor innocent bystander screeching or turned anyone to stone. Which is a lot more than I can say for your siblings.”
That, finally, wrung a chuckle from Jason. Bruce took the opportunity to release him from the hug and also swipe some sugar cookies from the rack. “Hey!” Jason said indignantly, trying to swipe them back. “They aren’t yours!”
“Sure taste like mine,” Bruce grinned with chipmunk cheeks, leading his son to growl with adorable menace and chase him around the kitchen furiously, Bruce laughing until he choked.
He thought Jason would be okay after that.
Then the second night heralded lemon shortbread.
The third? Mint chocolate chip.
The fourth was dedicated to snickerdoodles.
The fifth to melomakaronas, and it was six months until Christmas too.
The sixth produced cheesy ham cookies.
The seventh? Rosemary parmesan.
The eighth bought forth matcha green tea with macadamias.
The ninth was savory oatmeal cookies in huge slabs.
The tenth was peanut butter and jam sandwich cookies.
The eleventh was garlic, chilli and thyme biscotti.
The twelfth was manchego and chorizo.
The thirteen day bought Dick into his study after a long day because he had suffered through twelve straight nights of culinary torture and begged Bruce to do something about this.
“It’s nuts, B,” Dick said, his head twitching like an anxious bird which, really, was theme-appropriate for a Siren. “He just keeps making them, every night. And they keep getting weirder,” Dick added like it was some sort of scandalous secret.
Bruce peeled his glasses off his face. “Let me get this straight. You don’t like that your brother is baking?”
“It’s not just the baking!” Dick protested. “Something's wrong with him. He’s up at dawn every morning too. It’s summer break, B!”
Bruce sighed. “Be that as it may, there’s no rule that says Jason has to sleep until three for all of summer break, unlike some people I could name.”
“But B, something is up here!”
“Dick,” Bruce said sternly. “Jason had a stressful experience a couple of weeks ago. Culinary therapy is one of the ways he channels his anxiety.”
“You could just say he’s a stress baker,” Dick interjected dryly.
“And he’s not hurting anyone and he’s happy doing it,” Bruce continued, ignoring this. “Would that all of my children be so productive with their break time. Unless there’s a fire, leave him be.”
Dick grumbled and apparently accepted that.
Which would have solved the problem, had Stephanie not come marching in soon after, looking far more hawklike than Dick. “B, do something about Jason! The smells are driving me nuts!”
Bruce peeled his glasses off again, frowning. “Jason is an excellent cook,” he chided. Better than anyone in the house, save Alfred.
“Yes! That’s the problem!”
Bruce was blank.
Steph put her taloned hands on her hips. “Every day I walk down into the most heavenly aromas known to man and I never get to eat any of them! Jason takes them all away! We never even get to look at them!”
“Did you ask if he’d give you some?” Bruce asked patiently.
Steph scowled and shook her thirteen year old head stubbornly.
“Well…” Bruce gave a there-you-are-then gesture.
“But he’s gone by the time I get there in the morning! And there’s never any left by the end of the day. He’s hogging them all, the pig!” Steph’s voice went briefly shrill, like a bird cry.
“He made them, so he gets to say who eats them,” Bruce shrugged, “Sorry, but that’s the house rules. Maybe ask him if he can make you some tomorrow night if you missed out today. Or hey, there's the kitchen!” he flourished like a salesman. “All ready and waiting! You could make your own, too. Nobody is stopping you.”
Steph scowled and stomped away, clicking under her breath like an angry bird.
Bruce shook his head and got back to reading. Then he sighed internally and took off his glasses again. “Yes, Damian?” he asked patiently.
His son coalesced out of the shadows of the room, his own shadow wings a pale echo of Bruce’s, since they were both aspect of the same concept and god blood, as they say, didn’t dilute. “Father, I demand you do something about Todd!”
“I’m shocked,” Bruce’s voice was dust dry. “Can I have some context, please?”
Damian drew himself up. “He is summoning the forces of Hades to do his bidding! That is not his right! He is a mere hellhound, while I am beget of Nemesis and Thanatos both! Summoning them to do my bidding is my right alone!”
Bruce tried his best to unpack that multitude of assumptions. Perhaps starting with the big one. “Damian, I am hundred percent sure your brother is not summoning nefarious forces from the Underworld. For one thing, he doesn’t know how. For another, he doesn’t have any reason to. And lastly,” Bruce held up a hand, forestalling Damian’s furiously opening mouth. “Summoning the forces of darkness for help is not generally something Jason does; not for world domination or to clean his room. Unlike some.”
Damian bridled, but accepted the point.
“What gave you the idea that Jason is summoning anything from anywhere?” Bruce asked, baffled.
“The baking!”
Bruce groaned. “Again, with the baking. What is it with the baking? Why do you think Jason baking is some insidious plot?”
“Because he doesn’t eat any of them!” Damian shouted furiously.
“How do you know that?” Bruce asked, taken aback.
Damian shuffled irritably at the inconvenient question. “The day he made the… snickerdoodles,” his son made a face at the undignified name. “I wished to partake, so I got up early to get some. Only he’d taken them from the kitchen. I saw him taking them past the hedge maze towards the lake…”
“South lake or east lake?”
“South. I followed him. He left the foodstuffs in a box on the bench overlooking the lake. Then he sat and read for a while, but then Alfred called us in for morning repast. He just left them there! And! I went back in the afternoon and the snickerdoodles were all gone. Something ate them!”
Alright. This had turned from a mildly farcical non-issue into quite a strange one. “Did you ask Jason about this?”
“Of course!” Damian seemed insulted at the idea Bruce thought he wouldn’t. “The cur wouldn’t admit his plot! He just said they were offerings and I asked ‘an offering to what or who?’ and he just replied Noumenia which is patently a lie because Noumenia offerings are only offered at the very first day of a waxing moon and,” Damian took a breath. “After that he told me to mind my own beeswax, which was nonsensical. I do not keep bees.”
Bruce buried his face in his hands. “Okay,” he said eventually. “Damian, I don’t think Jason is up to anything sinister, but thank you for bringing this to my attention. I’ll talk with Jason and find out what’s going on, okay?”
Damian nodded sharply. “This is acceptable. If you require assistance fighting off summoned forces, mother sent me a new blood sword. I shall stand by your side, Father.”
“I appreciate that kiddo, but I have no need of swords of any kind right now,” Bruce informed him gently. “Off you go.”
When his son had left, Bruce rubbed his temples. Honestly, why did he think taking in a bunch of Crossblood monster children would be such a stellar plan?
Because, he thought back at himself. Because they had no one. Because their parents and families and entire species are basically used as target practice by the gods and mortals and everything in between. Because Halfblood children of the gods have a camp where they can be safe, why not the monsters as well? So few of them even survived and those that did nursed a deep and bitter hatred or fear for the demigods, which was understandable; but it usually led to yet more conflict in an aeons long war.
This could be some ritual for the line of Cerberus that Bruce didn’t know about. Rituals were so important in their world for a variety of reasons. Monsters, Crossbloods, were so often slaughtered wholesale that what little cultural specificities they could claim were often nothing more than ragged, tattered, badly remembered scraps of their own history, carefully preserved where they could be.
The Hellhounds might have their own rituals and blessings, practiced in secret. You couldn’t show your colors in a world where showing it would get you killed. It had taken Jason a long time to accept this place as his home; Hellhounds were territorial to an extreme degree and didn’t cope well when the environment changed, even for the better. Maybe he felt safe enough to actually enact some of his species rituals? Perhaps; but just because he felt safe enough to do them now didn’t necessarily mean he felt safe enough to tell people what they were.
It was all Bruce could think of.
Resolved to talk this over with his second son once everyone else had gone to bed, Bruce put his glasses back on and tried to get back to his article.
He made it through about two more sentences.
"Cass," he said as he heard the knock. At least she did knock. "What can I do for you?"
"Fight," was her incredibly succinct response.
Bruce's frowned. "Do you mean you want to spar or… and you're gone again," he narrated to the empty air, Cass leaving silently having delivered what she believed was an accurate and detailed report. Honestly, Cass was his favorite for a number of reasons but her assumption that everyone saw things as clearly as a Gorgon did could be trying.
Not her fault, he reminded himself. When you spend your life with only statues for company your vocabulary isn't precisely well honed.
Bruce put away his article sadly. He doubted very much the Fates were with him at this point. He'd have to go down and have a word with them.
He was just about to the door when he nearly ran into Alfred.
“Oh good, sir, I was just about to get you,” the butler said calmly. “There appears to be a slight altercation in the kitchens that might need some of your parental intervention.”
Right, a fight. Thank you, Cass. “Why did I do it, Alfred?” Bruce asked in despair. “Why did I even start Camp Crossblood?”
“I imagine, sir, for the same reasons as all your most destructive projects,” Alfred was imperturbable. “It seemed like a good idea to you at the time. Act in haste, repent at leisure was never a concept you grasped particularly well, in my experience.”
“Yes, thank you Alfred,” Bruce said ironically as he headed down to the cacophony rising from the kitchen. “What would I do without your insight?”
“I shudder to imagine, sir.”
Bruce found Cass hovering at the doorway, her hair snakes writhing and agitated.
“Hands OFF!” Came the roar of Jason within. “They’re NOT YOURS!”
“Cool your jets!” Steph yelled. “Literally!”
“It’s okay, Jay. Look, we’re backing away.”
“Titans do not retreat!”
“Dami!”
Bruce whistled sharply, getting the attention of everyone in the room. “That’s enough, all of you. What happened? Jay?”
Jason’s eyes were glowing red and his claws were out. He was bent over the kitchen counter, a visible heat haze rising off his body and the smell of burning cloth filling the space. Bruce thought it better to disarm him first lest he set off the fire alarms.
“Jason, it’s alright,” Bruce told the boy calmly. “Just tell me what happened.”
Jason eyes darted wildly and suspiciously from Steph on his right, plumage and talons showing as her inner Fury came to the surface and Dick and Damian on his right; Damian had his shadow wings out threateningly and Dick was humming slightly off key, trying vainly to defuse the tension.
“They,” he managed to growl. “Are stealing my things. Mine!” He snarled at Steph in particular who still had a couple in her talons.
“There were a whole bunch of them on the cooling racks!” Steph retorted, voice shrill. There was a brief eddy of wind. “I only took a few! You didn’t have to burst in here like I was robbing your family altar!”
“We didn’t mean to steal any, Jay,” Dick added. Bruce noticed one side of his cheek bulged out. “They just looked really good! We thought they’d been left out as, you know, freebies! They’re pretty tasty; they’re all salty and savory. What’s in them?”
Jason glowered at him. “Pork floss and seaweed,” he announced.
Steph and Dick both froze. Steph looked down at the cookie in her hands.
“With cricket flour,” Jason added.
Dick was sweating. “Cricket flour? That’s, like, a brand name, right?”
“No,” Jason smirked at him. “It’s a type.”
Steph surveyed the cookies thoughtfully while Dick tried not to look like he wanted to spit and then maybe vomit as well. “I’ll try anything, once.” She popped them in her mouth. “Hey! They are pretty good!”
Dick swallowed, then remembered why that was a bad idea. “Jay, how could you do that to those innocent cookies. What did those cookies ever do to you!” he said, aghast. “Think of the cookies, Jay!” he beseeched.
“Oh, knock it off you twice baked ham,” Jason snapped. “There’s nothing wrong with cricket flour. It’s sustainable and high in protein.” The heat haze went down slightly.
Bruce relaxed slightly. Dick was ever a good peacemaker.
“What are you even doing with all these cookies, though?” Steph asked. “You’re baking every night! You can’t be eating them all, you’d be rolling everywhere if you did.”
Jason tensed up again. “None of your business,” he growled at her.
“He is making offerings to the forces of Tartarus,” Damian announced haughtily. “Rest assured, Todd, your machination will come to naught.”
Everyone had a moment where they had to reset their faces. “What the fuck did you just say, you thrice cursed baby destroyer of worlds?” Jason snarled.
“Hey! Some attention here!” Bruce broke in before it could escalate again. “Damian, for the last time, Jason isn’t summoning anything. Steph, next time ask and I’m pretty sure I already told you to do that so that's extra chores for you. Dick, same rules apply. Jason made the cookies so he gets to choose what to do with them and if he doesn’t want to share for whatever reason,” he looked over Jason’s tense frame, hands clenched around a container no doubt stuffed with cookies, like he was worried it would be taken off him. “That’s his business. No one else's,” Bruce added sternly. “Now all of you, off to bed. And try to keep it to a dull roar, please.”
They filed out in various states of shamefaced, haughty, baffled and grouchy. Cass kissed him on the cheek, snakes tucked back into sleep. Jason took his cookies with him, carrying them in clenched fists, his stressed red eyes darting around warily. Hellhounds were territorial and protective, though that they could be over cookies was a new one on Bruce.
Bruce sighed.
“If I might make a suggestion, sir,” Alfred said as he began to tidy up. “Perhaps it would be best to leave Master Jason alone for tonight. I daresay he’s a bit wound up and might not be in the mood for talking.”
Bruce nodded to this. He’d thought the same. It would be better for everyone if they gave him a chance to wind down a little. He was a good boy, tough as nails, but his Hellhound instincts could make him as high strung as an over-tuned violin. Sometimes he needed to be given space.
Bruce’s surmise proved correct when he walked past Jason’s door that night. It was locked tight, a sure sign Jason still felt stressed. Bruce resolved to catch him in the morning.
Except, when morning rolled around, Jason wasn’t in his room. The door was open, which was a good sign, but there was no sign of it’s thirteen-year-old usual occupant.
Then Bruce remembered - Dick mentioned that Jason was getting up early. He therefore went down to the kitchens to seek him out, since it was the safest bet. He didn’t find Jason but he did find Alfred, floured to his elbows as he kneaded dough for breakfast buns. There was a faint scent of greenery and flowers on the older man, a sign he’d been out in his domain, wandering through the kitchen gardens and encouraging them to grow as any good nymph did in their domain.
“Have you seen Jason, Alfred?” Bruce asked.
“I have not, sir,” Alfred replied without pausing in his work. “The lad was up and gone before I started for the day.”
Which meant he had been up early. Bruce tried to think where he’d go.
“It’s very quiet this morning, Master Wayne,” Alfred said pointedly. “Excessively so, one might say.”
Bruce stared at him and then cursed. What did Damian say he saw Jason go? The lake?
What were the odds that Jason’s erstwhile but nosy siblings wouldn’t get curious?
Pretty damn low, Bruce thought as he skirted the hedge maze, still in his dressing gown, pajamas and slippers. They were good kids but the Manor was a tiny village; everybody getting in one another's business and therefore stepping on one another's nerves.
The south lake - and really, they should just call it a pond - was right down at the edge of the property line in a copse of venerable old oak trees. They’d hacked back the greenery at the shoreline and planted grass but otherwise left the grove mostly to its own devices. Along the back of the lake was the tall wall demarking the property line on this side.
Bruce drew the shadows about himself as he reached the grove, a true aspect of Nemesis, walking the mortal world. A faint ping made itself known on his divine sensibilities; there was a small injustice somewhere in the vicinity. It was hard to tell what or who it pertained to; it could just be the fact that the kids were spying on Jason, which was harmless and normal for them, but faintly unfair to Jason. His divine powers were hypersensitive to injustices to an insanely microscopic degree, which was useful for a few things and wildly inconvenient for just about everything else.
He moved closer to the lakeshore, cloaked in shadow.
Someone made a hushing noise.
Nemesis frowned, because if anything was making noise right now it wasn’t him. Retribution came silently.
He looked up, and sighed.
There was a Siren and a Fury perched in the damn trees like the silly birds they were, bending back the screen of leaves to peer into the open grove.
“Do you see anything?” Dick hissed.
“Shhhh! He’ll hear you?”
“He probably will. After all, I can.”
Steph squeaked, lost her grip in a shower of sawdust from her scrabbling talons, and dropped. Bruce’s shadow wings moved to catch her, but there was no need; Dick’s taloned feet were wrapped securely and he just swung around on his branch, neatly snatching Steph mid-fall by her ankle.
She stared at Bruce, nose to upside down nose.
Bruce’s eyes narrowed.
She grinned. “Don’t even pretend you don’t want to know too.”
“Yes, but Stephanie,” Bruce helpfully let her brace on his shoulder and execute a flip to the ground. “I want to know because he told me himself, not because I’m spying on him.”
“Yeah, but you’re the Dad, B,” Dick pointed out, still upside down. “We’re the kids. You listen, we sneak around and find out.”
Bruce sighed.
“Hey, look!” Steph pointed excitedly. “I see something!”
Despite himself, Bruce looked too. Jason was sitting on a bench placed at the water’s edge, box of cookies at his feet and reading a book. He was half in profile, half turned away from them at the angle he sat, so they couldn’t really see clearly past him, but Steph was right.
The waters were rippling. Like something was in there.
Bruce tried to think wildly if there were any creatures in the lake that he’d forgotten about. Damian had an unfortunate habit of adopting a veritable menagerie of creatures that were now grudgingly housed on the Manor grounds, although Bruce had drawn the line at the manticore. He wouldn’t put it past his youngest to have somehow managed to smuggle a baby Charybdis or a sea goat or a hippocampus onto the property.
The waters rippled again. It was hard to see the figure very clearly because Jason’s body and the bench obscured most of their view, but they could hear, faintly, the splashing sound of something emerging from the lake.
Something that was tentatively reaching for the box of cookies at Jason’s feet.
“Is that a hand?” Steph gaped.
“Is that a child?” Bruce said right after her.
“Is that Damian?”
The other two looked up at the still hanging upside down Dick. Dick wasn’t looking towards Jason, though. His alarmed stare was directed off to the side, where Damian was readying himself to leap out of the bushes, wielding a wicked looking sword.
The three looked at each other.
Then, as one unit, they exploded from their hidey hole just as Damian leapt out from behind his cover with a war cry.
“Damian, wait! ”
“Look out!”
“I have you now, foul hell field!”
“Stop!”
“What the fuck?!”
Jason burst into flames in sheer surprise, ears and nose lengthening and claws sprouting, swelling points on either side of his neck as his other heads started to manifest, eyes burning red.
There was a scream of terror. Bruce had a confused vision of something vaguely humanoid blurring into some other form but all he got before it disappeared into the murk was a flash of silvery scales, like a fish.
Jason half-shift into his Hellhound form dropped abruptly and he ran, stricken, to the water's edge, clothes still smoking. “Tim! Timmy, come back! I’m sorry! Tim?” He rounded on all of them, eyes glowing like embers. “What the actual fuck do you people think you’re DOING?” he roared at the top of his lungs.
“Jay,” Bruce started but got no further as his son's furious gaze turned on him.
“Oh no, you do not get to pull the language card or the reasonable volume card on me!” he growled. “Do you know how fucking long it took me just to even to him to eat something? To trust me enough to come out while I was there? I nearly fucking had him convinced to come to the fucking house! He was starving to death! He had nowhere to go! You said everyone who comes here is welcome!”
Bruce was stuck silent at this. Jason almost never turned such rage on them.
“But Little Claw,” Dick said, neatly extracting the sword from Damian's grip. “Who, exactly, is he?”
“What is he?” Damian added. “He is clearly not mortal.”
“Neither are you, Hellbrat,” Steph pointed out.
“I am not a hellion. I am a Titan!” Damian hissed furiously.
Bruce made an executive decision. “All of you, go back to the Manor,” he ordered them. “Jason, you stay here with me so we can… see what we can do about your… friend.”
Bruce accepted no buts, ifs, or maybes. Back to the house they others went, Dick herding a furious Damian and a still curious Steph, straining to see even as she was led out of sight. Bruce was just about to swear he would take Cass out for ice cream specially, just because she was the sane one, until he saw her drop silently from the shadows and give him a nod, following along with the others with them being none the wiser.
“Anyone else?” Jason bit out. “Alfred going to come out of the ground, maybe?” The words were bitter.
Bruce sighed. “I’m sorry Jay. I just came out to talk to you. I didn’t realize your siblings had come out to poke their sticky beaks in.”
“Or their swords!” Jason protested, still furious. “The demon brat was going to cut Tim’s head off!”
“Yes, and he’ll be punished for that,” Bruce told him calmly. “But in the meantime, how about we take care of… Tim, was it?” Bruce asked. “I’m guessing it was him that made you react so badly a couple of weeks ago.”
Jason slumped. “Yeah. I ran out to see who’d broken in and… and I think I really scared him, B. He doesn’t like fire and I was all Hellhound and he jumped into the lake and… and I couldn’t get him to come out again. So I started bringing him cookies, like… like a peace offering, I guess. But he kept on staying where he was and he wouldn’t eat! It was my fault! I had to keep trying to get him to eat, at least!”
“It’s alright, Jay,” Bruce put his hands on his downcast son’s shoulders. “Why didn’t you tell me? I would have helped.”
“He was so scared, B,” Jason replied. “He… the only way I could even get him to come near me is to promise I wouldn’t tell anyone he was here. I couldn’t break my word, it was my fault he was too scared to come closer! I thought… I thought I could convince him to come up to the house on his own. I nearly did!” Jason added, frustrated. “I nearly did and they all ruined it! He won’t ever come back now.” Jason sniffed, dejected.
Bruce hugged him. “I don’t know about that, Jay. Let me try something, okay?”
“Okay.”
Bruce peered into the lake. It wasn’t exactly deep. If Bruce waded in the water might make it to his hips at its deepest point. It was hard to tell through the algae ridden muck all ponds inevitably turned into, but Bruce was pretty sure he could see something huddled down at the very bottom of it, tightly coiled and trying to dig its way into the mud to hide.
Hmm.
Bruce unleashed his wings to their maximum strength, two great moving pieces of shaped night, towering above and around them both, their size ridiculous but awe inspiring. Bruce angled them with care and used them to envelop the lake entirely, shrouding it in night.
Then he angled them down and, essentially, dredged the lake in one huge scoop.
Jason surged forward. “B, stop! Stop it! You’ll scare him!” he pleaded frantically.
Bruce didn’t heed him. Instead he focused on drawing his wings back towards them, filtering out everything but the tiny signal of an injustice still pinging on his immortal radar. It hadn’t gone away when the others had been chivvied back to the Manor and it wasn’t coming from Jason so logically the injustice must pertain to whatever being was in the lake.
All the water and mud and muck sieved out, leaving behind something small and silvery that clawed desperately at his prison, trying to escape. Bruce blinked as the serpentine body unfurled and scuttled frantically off the wings that captured it and onto the ground, darting frantically this way and that, looking for an escape.
“Tim!” Jason called, going forward. ‘Tim’ made a panicked noise that made Jason flinch back, but Tim had apparently decided any familiar port in a storm and rapidly scuttled behind Jason and up onto his back where it settled, quivering, behind its chosen shield, coiling as much of itself as small as it possibly could.
“Oof. You’re heavier than you look, Baby Scales,” Jason’s voice was hopelessly fond as he sat down on the ground, heedless of the mud and dirt, and let the creature wrap it’s tail tightly around his waist, still shaking. “It’s okay,” he said soothingly. “It’s okay Baby Scales, it’s just Bruce. I told you about Bruce. He’s an idiot,” he levelled Bruce with an angry red glare. “But he won’t hurt you.”
Jason craned an arm up and around to pat a head.
Another head snaked around his left side to peek at Bruce before ducking back. A third slunk low to the ground, little nostrils flaring.
“A hydra?” Bruce was astonished as he retracted his wings fully. He’s seen hydras of course, but never one quite that small or that young. “I didn’t know Jack Drake even had a son,” he added, because that was the only explanation for how a Hydra ended up in Gotham. They weren’t exactly a common species anywhere, let alone in Gotham. The Drakes had been the only ones.
Tim’s whole body flinched and curled up tighter at the sound of the name, claws digging into Jason’s shirt .
“It’s okay, Baby Scales. Bruce isn’t going to send you back to him.” His second son levelled Bruce with a look that promised retribution if Bruce even thought it. “Arg, easy on the claws, bud.”
Tim made a soft apologetic noise and shifted. Suddenly the silvery and tiny - medium-dog sized - hydra was a tiny, dark haired, blue eyed child, younger than Jason's thirteen, his skin wan and pale from lack of sunlight. “Ssssorry,” he whispered.
Jason reached back and patted his head again. “‘S okay, I’ve had worse.”
“Tim, was it?” Bruce began softly. “Tim Drake?”
Tim peeked over Jason’s shoulder with wide eyes, and nodded.
“Nice to meet you, Tim. I knew your dad a long time ago,” Bruce told him. “He was a good man.”
“Fuck that, he’s an asshole,” Jason bit back angrily. “He attacked Tim! That’s why he ran away!”
Tim made a wounded noise. “It’s… not his fault,” he mumbled in a hoarse voice.
“He tried to kill you, Baby Scales,” Jason said in the weary tones of one who had said this dozens of times before. “I don’t give a fuck what his excuses are.”
“Your parents were attacked when they were on a dig, weren’t they?” Bruce asked Tim. “I remember your mother was killed and your father was… wounded.” That was likely the source of the injustice that still clung to the boy. He’d bear it for a long time, just like Bruce had.
“He lost too many heads,” Tim said sadly.
“What now?” Jason’s brow wrinkled.
“Hydras. Cut off one head, two more grow,” Bruce recited.
“Yes thank you, B, I was aware,” Jason sassed dryly.
“Alright, smartass. Imagine, though, what it would be like to grow more brains. To have twelve, twenty, fifty different brains, all dealing with different sensory input, all semi independent, all with only one consciousness to go around. One mind… fragmented into new pieces for every new head,” Bruce explained as Tim’s face dropped.
“Oh,” Jason’s voice was flat as he got it. “So he’s, like, crazy.”
“It’s not his fault,” Tim repeated wearily.
There was a silence, filled with soft sniffling. Jason twisted around to give Tim as much of a hug as he could manage from his position.
Hellhounds were protective - of both territory and pack.
“Tim, would you like to come up to the house now? You’re welcome here,” Bruce asked him. “We could get you some clothes and shoes. Your own bed. A proper meal.”
“There’s nothing wrong with my cookies,” Jason grumbled as he cuddled the slowly relaxing Tim.
“Did I say so?” Bruce smiled. “He needs vegetables and things, Jay.”
“No he doesn’t,” Jason grumbled with all his thirteen years worth of assurance. “He’s like me; an obligated carnivore.”
“Obligate. And no, you’re not,” Bruce snorted.
“Don’t listen to him, Timmy,” Jason rose, Tim still clinging to him. “He’s a dirty rotten liar. You’ll back me up on this, right?”
“Um…” Tim was smiling faintly. “I don’t…”
“Come on, us multi heads have to stick together!” Jason admonished.
“Um… I guess I can live on meat?” Tim grinned tentatively.
“Hell yeah, that’s the way Baby Scales!”
Bruce gave his son and his, apparently, new son a flat look. “Obligate carnivores don’t get cookies,” he said, sweeping the miraculously undisturbed and forgotten box of cookies from the ground. “So I guess these are all mine, then.”
“What? No way!” Jason yelped and took off running after the personification of retribution while the latter sprinted away in fluffy slippers, dressing gown trailing behind him. “B, get back here!”
Tim laughed, hanging on to Jason.
Bruce remembered too late as he stuffed one in his mouth just how unusual they were.
They weren’t bad, actually.