Work Text:
“Tim, you want a what?” Garfield asks, looking more confused than offended as Tim clutches at his camera.
“I mean it’s not like I’ll have any other chance to photograph a T-Rex, Gar. Plus, we can use it for official Titans publicity” Tim explains, watching the boy’s green hair as Gar squints at him.
“I mean, Dude. I am always up for a photoshoot but. I have literally never seen you ask a anyone for a picture. Not even Wonder Woman. And Wonder Woman’s awesome” Garfield explains, walking to the centre of the room anyway, where he won’t destroy the ceiling by changing into a T-Rex.
Tim just sighs and holds up his camera, mentally asking Gar if he wants a picture or not.
Garfield changes, growing taller and taller and scales appearing on his skin before, in a matter of moments, there is a dinosaur in front of Tim, standing tall and still Green.
Tim doesn’t waste Time, taking multiple pictures of Garfield as a T-Rex before he changes back, still looking at Tim like he might think Tim is an alien impostor.
“I’m watching you” Garfield says, still suspicious as Tim rolls his eyes and leaves the room to go develop the film.
He wonders if he could maybe, maybe edit the photo to make the dinosaur less, well. Green.
Xxxxx
“Drake. Are you befouling Alfred the cat?” Damian’s voice demands, right as Tim finally gets the colour contrast on his camera right.
“I’m taking pictures, Demon Brat” Tim replies, shushing Alfred when he starts getting restless and moving around.
“Why?” Damian demands imperiously.
Tim falters “Why? I mean, why take pictures of anything? Why have portraits? Why paint like a thousand pictures of your cat?” Tim asks, finally snapping a shot that he’s happy with.
He knows it’ll look good. He knows.
Alfred, standing in a warm patch of sunlight, with sparks of glowing dust floating around his black and white body as he stares out the window.
It’s a good picture. Or it will be, once Tim develops it.
Damian scoffs, picking Alfred up, into his arms and looking down at Tim with a scowl.
“You will give me a copy of the photograph as compensation for Alfred’s time. And I shall judge if it was worth his effort” Damian says, turning his back on Tim and walking away.
Tim sighs.
Great. Now he has to develop 2 pictures.
Xxxxxx
“What are you doing, Tim?” Bruce asks, not even glancing away from the Batcomputer to face Tim. Tim, who is currently laying flat on his stomach, trying desperately to get a frame of Ace that doesn’t look like the whole dog is one with the shadows.
“Struggling” Tim answers, rolling his head and changing the angle of the camera to try and catch a part of Ace that isn’t swathed in shadow. “Now I know why you called him the Bat Hound” he mutters.
“And why is that?” Bruce asks patiently.
“Because he’s just as dark and broody as you are” Tim snarks, finally sitting up, giving up on trying to photograph Ace against the backdrop of stones that is the Batcave.
Bruce doesn’t answer him, but the sound of typing continues as Tim stands, eyeing the available light sources in the room.
Several hanging lights but not bright enough to make out Ace’s dark coat against the shadows. Of course, the display cases are much brighter and thus more viable, but Tim does not want the likes of the scaly panties and the Discowing suit in his picture, thank you.
“You know, there’s a strong light near the Batmobile that can rotate” Bruce says and Tim is almost confused about why he says it before it clicks.
Standing, Tim rushes over to the Batmobile, starting the engine and turning on the headlights before reaching for the maintenance light they use when fixing something in the Batmobile.
Between the two sources of ultra-powerful light, Ace is now spotlighted against the backdrop of the cave, brown brindle fur displayed as he almost poses for Tim, sitting down with his chest puffed up.
It’s the perfect photo.
“Thanks, B!” Tim yells out over the drone of the Batmobile as he takes several pictures from several different angles.
Bruce just grunts back at him, sounding vaguely amused.
Xxxxxx
“Replacement! Where you at?!”
Tim sighs, eyes lifting marginally as he lays in bed, Titus draped across his chest like a weight. Which, he is. Titus weighs enough that Tim bets Bruce used him as a weight at least once.
He, pointedly, does not answer Jason’s call, rather closing his eyes again as Jason’s footsteps thunder closer, causing Titus to shift, much to Tim’s displeasure.
“You’re disturbing Titus” Tim gripes as Jason hovers in the door of his room.
“Yeah, yeah. Whatever. I need your help with something” Jason demands, leaning against the doorframe with a raised brow.
“What is it?” Tim asks, resigned to offering his help whether he wants to or not.
“Barbie locked me out of the Bat system. I need info for a case. I need you to unlock me from the system” Jason explains easily, like it’s that easy. Like if he says it casually enough, Tim will fall for the pit trap.
“Yeah no” Tim starts, eyes falling closed again, now that he knows he won’t be moving “I am not going against Barbara. Just apologize for whatever you did and hope that she’s in a forgiving mood” Tim says.
“What makes you think I did anything?” Jason asks.
“Because it’s Barbara” Tim says plainly.
They both know that Barbara wouldn’t lock anyone out unless it was for revenge or punishment.
Jason sighs, defeated, and Tim relaxes into the warm, crushing weight of Titus’ body.
That is, until Tim feels a tug on his foot, pulling him down the bed. He screeches before yelling “Titus, get him!”.
Titus merely stands, letting Tim slip the rest of the day off the bed, before staring at Jason with contemplative eyes.
Then, Titus lunges, tackling Jason to the floor, where Titus circles his chest and lays down across Jason’s stomach. Jason huffs at the weight and Tim laughs, automatically reaching for his camera to take a shot.
“That’s what you get for interrupting my nap. And pissing off Barbara”
Xxxxxx
There are cats everywhere. Literally everywhere. Tim can see at least 3 on the counter and knows there is one behind his head on the couch too.
Selina had once told him that there was no such thing as too many cats. But Tim’s starting to wonder, as the cats all meow, demanding food.
“Alright, alright. Patience, my little kitties” Selina says, standing from the couch to feed her multitude of cats.
“You have to teach them patience if you want them to have it, Selina” Tim points out, jolting as one of the younger cats that Selina had named Star, jumps onto his lap.
Star is adorable. Barely an adult, with some kitten fluff left from her younger days. Selina had called her Star because of the spots across her black fur, like stars in the night sky.
Star kneads at his legs a bit before she rumbles her contentedness, flopping down on his thighs for a nap, while the other cats eat.
She’d already had her fill, since Tim always secretly snuck her some dinner.
“The blind leading the blind” Selina comments, showing that she at least acknowledges her lack of patience, which is probably where the cats got it from.
Star yawns, showing sharp, white canines off before butting her head against Tim’s thigh with a purr.
Tim takes a snapshot right there, happy that he brought along his camera.
Xxxxx
“Just one picture! Please, aunt Harley?!” Tim begs, staring at Bud and Lou with his camera in his hand.
Harley huffs, turning from where she’s cooking dinner for her and Pam to take in Tim’s puppy dog eyes. Usually, Tim would just take a picture, whether Harley agrees or not. But Harley might actually just skin him for that.
She’s been trying to teach him about boundaries.
“And if I say no?” Harley asks, crossing her arms.
“Then I won’t take any!” Tim says, widening his eyes as far as they could go.
Harley tries to hold out but Tim’s been trained. By Dick Grayson. In the art of the puppy dog eyes.
Nobody holds up against that. Nobody.
Not even Bruce stands up against the master of pouting.
“Fine!” Harley yells after a couple of seconds, turning her attention back to her dinner with a grumble of “Boy hostage”.
Tim doesn’t pay it any attention, just turning to poke and prod Bud and Lou into a picture where he can see them both.
Xxxxx
“How this fuck did we let this happen?” Jason demands, writhing against his bindings as the floor floods with water. Gotham river’s rising tide kicking in, just like Riddler said it would.
“It was all Drake’s fault” Damian spits, even though they all know that isn’t true.
“Yeah no, Demon Brat. It had nothing to do with the League teaming up with Riddler” Tim spits, frustrated and angry.
The room is flooding, slowly but steadily. A trickle of water coming down the wall at Bruce’s side from a window. Not even a barred window. Just a window.
But none of them can get out of the cuffs. Tim isn’t even sure how they’re made. Just solid steel with no latches. Tim would have to dislocate his thumb just to have a chance of getting out.
But the room is flooding and all of them are injured in one way or another. Bruce breathing or at least attempting to breathe through a concussion, while Jason swears at the bullet wound in his side. Damian has a large cut along his left arm that’s still bleeding and Dick Is wincing ever time he jostles his possibly dislocated hip
And Tim? The only injury Tim is suffering from is the fucking drugs in the darts Ra’s had used to take him down. Yeah, his head is kind of fuzzy and there’s a definite pressure behind his eyes but he’s conscious and aware.
Really that should be enough. But even if Tim gets out and finds one of the remaining Bats, the room will start flooding faster soon and Tim isn’t sure he’d make it back in time to save his father and brothers. At least not like this.
But none of the others are doing anything. Unable to unlatch the cuffs to escape and too injured to run, even if they do.
But what if they don’t have to unlatch the cuffs? Or leave?
Tim could get out of these cuffs in moments, without even having to know the trick. And he could probably free the others.
But that would mean telling them.
It would mean telling them the one secret that Tim has kept from them.
But what would that secret be worth if they all died?
It wouldn’t.
Screw the secrecy. Tim has a family to save.
Resolve settles into his bones, his eyes closing in concentration as a picture comes into his mind’s eye. A snake that Damian had almost taken home. Boa constrictor. It had been long, green skin dotted with brown. Eyes small and focused, with a black tongue poking out to scent the air.
Tim had only taken one picture. He still has it in his box.
Slowly, the smell of Gotham water becomes more of a taste than a scent, Tim’s limbs slipping from the cuffs with no effort as he shrinks.
He can hear his family’s exclamations of shock and maybe even horror as his cold, scaly body drops into the water below him. Boa constrictors can swim. But they don’t like that. And now Tim understands why. Cold seeping into his skin and over his scales as his eyes open.
He can’t see through the dark, murky water, but he can see Jason. Jason’s the closest.
Tim doesn’t hesitate to swim over to his brother, who is silent in shock as Tim slithers up his body towards the lock on his brother’s wrist.
A trick. That’s what the cuffs are. But Tim still can’t see any locking mechanism.
He doesn’t know how to unlock it.
But. He doesn’t have to.
The chains are attached to the wall with steel rods, built into the walls long ago. A long, long time ago.
Maybe Bruce can’t break them out. Or Jason.
But Tim can.
Closing his lids again, Tim thinks back to the box of pictures, mentally paging through them all. Then, he remembers Garfield. The picture he took of Garfield as a T-Rex.
Tim opens his eyes just long enough to confirm that a T-Rex would fit inside of the chamber they’re in, Tim thinks and remembers.
Green scales. Strong muscles beneath skin. Long tail. Green eyes narrowed in suspicion.
Once again, Tim feels his body flexing. Changing. He has just enough time to throw his scaly body into the water before he crushes his brother, growing larger and larger and larger until he can actually see out the window at the top of the chamber.
Shifting slowly, he lowers his head to Jason’s side and huffs at Jason’s gaping expression, taking the metal chain in his mouth and ripping it out of the wall with minimal effort.
“What. The. Fuck?” Jason demands slowly, eyes focused on Tim as he frees each of his family members from their watery graves-to-be.
Tim huffs, watching Jason with heavy eyes, refusing to look at Bruce as Jason hisses and clamps a hand down on his still-bleeding side.
They need to get out. Now.
Dick must know that as well, wincing as he stands and using Damian as a crutch, climbing Tim’s tail and back until they can drag themselves out the window by his head. Jason follows shortly after, dragging Bruce along.
And that’s when Tim relaxes. They’re safe.
“Timmy” Dick says, voice shaky but calm as he says “You gotta get out of there too”.
But Tim won’t fit through the window like this. He can’t. It just isn’t possible.
So Tim closes his eyes again and thinks. A dog wouldn’t make that jump. No way. But…a cat could use the walls…?
As Tim thinks that, his body changes again, shrinking further and further until he’s plunged into the water at the bottom, having gotten deeper than he expected.
But Tim pushes past the panic and the cold clawing at his skin, through the fur coat.
He makes his way up and up and up until he can drag his sad, wet body through the window. Sopping wet, black and white fur drips as Tim glares at Dick with narrowed golden eyes.
“Alfred?” Damian asks, reaching out and Tim can’t help but hiss at him, his head even more lightheaded now, in this smaller body, than it was in his human one.
“Let’s get him home” Bruce’s voice says, right as Tim loses his grip on consciousness, the change spreading through his body as everything goes dark.
Xxxx
Tim wakes up in the cave’s med bay, with a drip in his arm and multiple blankets thrown over his form. It’s warm and Tim can see Bruce hovering in his peripheral as Tim coughs himself awake.
He’s kinda surprised he didn’t wake up in a cell.
“I wouldn’t put you in a cell” Bruce says, having somehow read Tim’s mind.
“I didn’t read your mind, Tim. You’re talking out loud. Now why did you think I’d throw you in a cell?”
Because Bruce doesn’t like metas, Tim thinks.
“Tim. Did you keep your meta status a secret…just because you thought I wouldn’t like you if you were a meta?”
Wow. Bruce really is a mind reader. Wonder if he knows that. Can’t hate metas if you are one.
“You know what, I’m not even going to ask. I think you’re still drugged. Can you tell me what your powers are, Tim”
Nothing to do with the pictures under my bed. Absolutely nothing. Not like I can’t turn into an animal unless I have a picture of them. No sirree.
Bruce is silent for a moment before a loud sigh rings out around Tim, another blanket settling over his form before a soft press of lips linger across his forehead.
“I love you Tim. No matter if you’re a meta or not”