Archive of Our Own ^beta

Most people, when they envision dragons, tend to envision creatures of the enormous, fire-breathing lizard variety.

Tim can understand this— he’d been about eight when he’d first seen his first memorable depiction of a dragon in a book, and it was, in fact, a creature of the enormous, fire-breathing lizard variety.

It’s not exactly what Tim sees in the mirror, though— being a dragon and all, himself.

In fact, in Tim’s experience, being a dragon feels a lot like being an awkward kid, and then an awkward teenager, and then an awkward almost-an-adult, which is kind of where he is now. In fact, he’s pretty sure he might actually be even more awkward than some of his human friends.

To be honest, it’s the dragon that really makes things awkward.

See, from the time that Tim was but a fledgling, he had always been aware of his second identity, even if he hadn’t presented as an actual fledgling. To any outside viewer, he’s the Drake heir: pale, short, and largely average-looking. Really, if it hadn’t been for his name and its prestige, Tim’s pretty sure he would have blended rather seamlessly into the crowd.

And from the inside— well.

That, he supposes, is where it gets a bit tricky.

So the thing is, Tim is, in theory, an enormous, fire-breathing lizard.

He thinks. It’d be pretty awkward if his dragon form was just the same size as he was— a very average five feet, five inches. He has barely anything to show for his draconic identity— no scales, no slitted eyes, no wings, no claws. Really, if Tim told anyone he was a dragon, they’d have a hard time believing the notion.

“Well, it’s better for us if humans don’t notice,” Janet had told him once, when he was still quite young. “After all, I’ve never even told your father that I’m a dragon. Better for your father, I think. He might get a bit of a complex if he knows I’m a dragon.”

Janet had always had fantastic control of her dragon-ness, so to speak. Tim had seen her break out tiny streams of concentrated blue fire to broil the tops of her creme brulees and reheat her coffee when it had been sitting out for too long. His mother is elegant, like that.

Was elegant like that, he supposes he should say.

It’s actually been a while since he’s seen his mother. He’s pretty sure she’s fine wherever she is; his mother has always been— fine, so he’s not really worried. Things had gotten a little dicey when she transformed while the two of them had been on a road trip together a few years prior, after a bout of road rage so intense Tim had frankly been surprised she didn’t cause a forest fire. Really, Tim thinks it was quite lucky that she happened to transform out in the middle of nowhere, but the less lucky thing was that she couldn’t seem to transform back, and she certainly couldn’t come back with him as a dragon.

So… She left. Understandable, really. Tim would have also left. Maybe he wouldn’t have left his kid with a car he didn’t really know how to drive, but like, he would have left at some point.

His dad had been a bit of a wreck, though, mostly because he didn’t know his wife was a dragon. Tim didn’t know how to tell him that Janet was probably fine, and it was the local wildlife that really should be looking out for itself; he didn’t think Jack would be particularly reassured by that, and he might also think Tim had gone insane from the grief of his mother vanishing.

In actuality, Tim’s kind of going insane because he’s pretty sure that internal dragon has a lot more to say these days then it used to, and now in the presence of possibly the best detectives on Earth.

…

He ought to rewind a little bit.

When he was a fledgling, Janet and Jack had taken him to the circus. He had watched the Flying Graysons live up to their namesake and fly. Some primal, prehistoric urge had consumed Tim’s chest, his bones, even as a child. He’d known— he wanted to fly, too. Something in him reared, beat his wings, roared, and when he’d tilted his head up to look at his mother’s expression, she’d been raptured. He swore he could hear her rumble, slightly, a pleased purr of a sound as she’d wound around him affectionately.

And then the Graysons fell.

They fell.

But even though his parents would never fly again, their son never stopped. He just swapped out the costume.

Tim had watched Dick Grayson fly in the circus, and then he’d watched Robin fly across the rooftops. And then he’d watched Robin fly across the rooftops again, but not the same Robin. This Robin was Jason Todd, and he quipped and laughed and snarled and shot across the sky like a shooting star, just like Dick Grayson. He flew—

And then he fell.

Then there was Tim.

The thing about secretly being a dragon is that one is afforded some benefits, even if they’re not always visible. For one, Tim has healing saliva, which is one of those benefits that comes in handy, but is extremely hard to administer without coming off incredibly weird. Janet had administered such treatment to Tim when he’d been younger, to his papercuts, to his scraped knees. Those had been the only moments Tim had registered the roughness of her tongue, the slight fork, those— attributes that made her feel less human in the moment, less human and more dragon. In fact, she had been more maternal as a dragon, as if some deeper instinct evoked the reaction out of her.

It was in those moments that Tim felt the most draconic, himself— when Janet presented, even slightly.

The problem is, Tim can’t very well go licking the injured; that’s considered a bit of a biohazard, sadly.

He also can’t exactly go licking himself, either— not because he isn’t able to, but because when one is under the mentorship of Batman, one of the aforementioned greatest detectives on Earth, one is likely to be questioned if an injury just vanishes.

Jack, for all of his better qualities, is not a particularly observant man. The same absolutely cannot be said for Bruce Wayne, who seems to mentally catalog any and every scrape Tim receives, both when he’s in costume and when he’s out of costume. The first time one of Tim’s battle wounds seems to heal all too quickly, Bruce startles him by asking about it.

“Uh,” Tim says eloquently, “Er.”

Bruce waits.

“I suppose it just wasn’t that bad,” Tim says.

Bruce looks past him at the exact point on the floor of the Batcave where Tim had lost like a pint of blood the day before.

“Wasn’t that bad,” Bruce echoes dryly.

“It was just dramatics in the end,” Tim says flippantly. “You know how some wounds are.” Really, he’s just cursing his own recklessness at this point; he could’ve at least put a bandage over the spot to occupy Bruce. He hadn’t expected Bruce to actually notice, what with the 900 other things Bruce always seems to have going on. “Anyway, I’m fine.”

Bruce does actually let him go on that one, mostly because— well, what else is he supposed to do? Mostly, he’s just glad Bruce hadn’t run a DNA test right then and there; Tim actually isn’t sure what would happen if he did. He wonders what on earth would even show up in his blood, but he’s in no hurry to find out.

The second benefit is that Tim’s senses are pretty great— certainly enhanced past typical human capabilities. He’s accidentally given himself away with Dick and Cass, before; case in point, when they were chatting about a joint gift for Barbara in one of the upstairs rooms of the Manor. Tim could hear them as clearly as if they were speaking to him, as clearly as if they were in the room together. He just— forgot that he wasn’t supposed to be able to hear them.

“Tim, we’re planning—” Dick starts to say later when he passes Tim in the hallway.

“—A gift for Babs, right?” Tim finishes idly, unthinking. There’s a moment of silence as it dawns on him what he just said; he wants to squeeze his eyes shut and yell, shit, Tim, why on earth did you just say that? Instead, he tries to play it casual as he rolls his gaze up from his phone to look at Dick and Cass. Dick’s eyebrows arch with surprise, and Tim, who can’t do eye contact on a good day, quickly averts his gaze from the bright blues. Cass tilts her head wordlessly in his periphery, and shit, Tim’s really remembering why he actually kind of hates living with detectives. They’re all good at what they do— too good at what they do, and even the slightest slip-up could be his unraveling, if he isn’t careful.

“Actually, yeah,” Dick says, recovering quickly. “Gift for Babs. But how did you— Um, I mean, I only talked about it a little bit with Cass today.”

“I just— figured,” Tim lies, because he isn’t sure what to say that won’t make him look suspicious. He figures it’s kind of a long jump from how did Tim know what I was going to say to Tim definitely has enhanced senses because he’s actually an enormous, scaly reptile, though, so Tim just takes his slip-up in stride and tries to smile casually, something he has historically always been quite bad at. “I— Are you sure you didn’t mention it to me, before?”

“No, I—” Dick pauses, and a frown draws his eyebrows together. “Well. Maybe, I’m not sure. I’ve had a lot going on.”

“Yeah, I mean. How else would I have known?” Tim says, and feels just awful about gaslighting Nightwing. Dick doesn’t deserve that; It’s just that when it comes to his identity, the only thing Janet’s ever made starkly clear is that he is, under no circumstances, to let anyone figure out what he is willingly. Then again, he figures glumly, if he also transforms into a giant dragon randomly like his mother had, then he can’t see how they wouldn’t figure it out. This flimsy human shield is pretty much the only thing keeping him from terrifying his friends and family on a casual Sunday afternoon.

“Right, right,” Dick says breezily, and winds an arm around Tim’s shoulders. When he glances back, Cass is right on their heels, but her expression doesn’t look nearly as convinced as Dick’s. These two, they’re a powerhouse; Dick won’t give away what he’s thinking, not immediately, and Cass is enough of a body language expert to know that Tim’s being disingenuous. They’re dangerous to slip up in front of on their own, let alone when they’re together. “Well, anyway, do you want to hear our plan?”

Tim knows the plan; he’d heard it in HD quality just earlier. He’s not stupid enough to also let that slip, though.

“Sure,” he says, and wipes his clammy palms down on his jeans as he resolves to himself to at least try not to unintentionally eavesdrop from now on. “Sure, yeah. Let’s hear it.”

The third benefit isn’t exactly a benefit so much as it is just a fact of life; Tim is going to age weird. Dragons live a hell of a lot longer than humans, which is a given, but Tim has no idea, yet, how that translates to the human on the outside. Janet had never looked a day older than thirty, even though Jack’s age was certainly starting to show in the corners of his eyes, in the silver streaks of his hair.

It’s still too early to tell, for Tim; he still grows during his stint as Robin. There’s a little bit of a growth spurt somewhere in between— he’s still short, almost devastatingly so compared to Jason, who comes back when Tim’s still Robin.

The whole situation is a little confusing, to say the least; actually, Tim kind of wonders, for a moment, if Jason is also a dragon. It kind of tracks; first of all, Jason is huge, the way Tim would have imagined a human representation of a dragon to actually look like. Second of all, Jason is distinctly not dead when he comes back, which would also track for a dragon; they aren’t immortal, exactly, but according to Janet, they sure are hard to kill.

Either way, it turns out it’s not really an inner dragon so much as it is the Lazarus Pit, which sucks for Jason. He kind of also makes it everyone else’s problem for a little while, which sucks for the rest of them. Tim kind of gets it, though, because dying seems like it’d be pretty traumatic, all things considered. Even still, he’s glad when Jason kind of chills out; he’s actually surprisingly decent company when he’s not actively trying to hunt them all for sport.

He really had made Tim wish he could actually turn into a dragon at several points, if for nothing else than to just eat Jason to make him shut up.

All jokes, of course. Tim would never eat a human. Because of morals, and also because he thinks humans would taste really gross. Also, after spending a lot of time as a human and with humans, he feels like that would be in really poor taste (pun unintended).

Then, there’s the matter of the fire-breathing.

“Steph,” Tim says for the millionth time, and he can hear exasperation bleed into his voice, “I’m not smoking.”

“Vaping, then,” Steph says, and tsks. “All I’m saying, Timster, is that you’d better not let big daddy Bats catch you.”

“Do not call him that, first of all,” Tim says, reaching out to shove her, and she squawks dramatically and flails, miming falling off the roof. He has a dad, firstly, and second of all, he never wants to hear daddy in the same sentence as anything to do with Bruce. “And second of all, I’m not smoking, or vaping, or— anything like that.”

“I mean, I literally saw smoke come out of your mouth,” Steph says pointedly.

“It was cold.”

“It’s June.”

“I was cold,” Tim says, and knocks a fist against her upper arm. “C’mon, Steph. You know I wouldn’t, right? Can’t you at least trust that?”

“I mean, I guess,” she says, pursing her lips at him skeptically and narrowing her eyes. The faint breeze in the muggy, humid summer air lifts a few strands of her blonde hair, and one gets precariously close to his nose. Tim can feel the entire lower half of his face twitch in an effort not to sneeze, because it’s when he sneezes that the smoke always seems to puff out. It kind of sucks, because the very least he could get is fire-breathing powers, but he supposes he can’t be greedy about it.

Even still, having to reheat his leftovers like every other human feels like a bit of a personal attack, honestly.

And then, of course, there’s the— not-really-benefits… Well, aside from not being able to heat his leftovers with his nonexistent fire breath, of course.

The truth is, it’s pretty fucking weird to have a giant dragon trapped inside of your tiny little human meatsuit, like, purely as a matter of principle. It also causes, like, a lot of issues, because even though Tim’s senses are great, he can never seem to figure his own size sometimes. He used to be the most graceless of the Robins, and now, as Red Robin, he’s kind of the most graceless of the Bats, even Jason, which is lowkey insulting. He’s still much better than the untrained civilian, but there’s just a sort of grace that he’s pretty sure he’s never going to be able to obtain.

It’s like this: sometimes when he’s just minding his own business, he abruptly feels like this enormous beast of a creature, and it kind of messes with his depth perception.

“You missed the ledge by like, ten feet, dumbass,” Jason says one night as they’re checking out a deal gone wrong in the Narrows together. As usual, he’s all bark, no bite, and he’s glaring at Tim’s foot beside the ledge as if he’s personally offended. He could actually be personally offended, to be honest, because he did have to catch Tim with his own grapple when Tim had missed the ledge. “You need glasses or something, Red? What the fuck was that?”

It doesn’t happen often, admittedly, but lately, Tim’s actually been more and more affected by the dragon, so to speak. He direly hopes some huge metamorphosis isn’t going to happen, because he actually hasn’t seen his mother since she transformed, and he’s not actually sure she ever did transform back.

In fact, the only time he had actually caught either hair or hide of his mother was when his father—

When Jack—

Tim had come back from the funeral, and there had been a patch of scales arranged in a ring on the doorstep. Dragons mate for life, Janet had told him once, an offhand comment as she’d affectionately laid Jack’s cufflinks beside his suit on the bed. She hadn’t been able to even come back, and Jack had died never knowing her secret, never knowing her identity— or Tim’s.

He still has his mother’s gray-blue scales in a tiny bottle in his room. He adds a few locks of Jack’s hair, too, once he’s able to actually move again.

If hiding his secret from the Bats had been hard when he was Robin and living at home with Jack, it becomes almost a thousand times harder to hide it from the Bats once Bruce adopts him, once he takes on Red Robin. It also adds a layer of guilt, somehow— Jack had died without ever discovering their secret, and now he has another family, another set of incredibly astute people that he has to hide the dragon from.

Case in point, Jason, who’s still glaring at him expectantly and clearly waiting for some sort of answer for Tim’s bizarre behavior with his arms crossed and his boot tapping impatiently against the rooftop.

“I— I don’t know, Hood,” he says, careful to keep their names out of the field. “I guess I just couldn’t see the ledge properly, or something. It’s not really a big deal.”

“It’s not a big deal because I caught your ass,” Jason says pointedly. Tim kind of hates that most of his weirdest dragon behavior just happens to exhibit when Jason is around, because he can be kind of an asshole about it. Granted, he doesn’t get it, but Dick doesn’t get it either, and he’s at least gentle. Gentle isn’t exactly the word that comes to mind when Tim thinks of how Jason reacts; he’s not cruel, per se, but Jason’s tone usually still tends harsh.

For example, with the hoarding—

(Tim had never actually realized he was hoarding, not really; photography is a hobby, and he enjoys partaking in the hobby. And the problem isn’t actually the hobby itself, but how he reacts when other people get a little too close to anything relating to his hobby.

“Hey, Tim?” Jason asks very casually, examining the pictures on the wall, “Why the fuck are you shaking and growling like a Chihuahua?”

“Huh?” Tim snaps out of it, his gaze fixated on the Jason and Jason’s proximity to his pictures, his hoard, his precious belongings, things that are so deeply important to him—

“Right. Like that,” Jason says as he turns to face Tim, sounding deeply weirded out. “Do you even know that you’re doing that?”

“Must just be exhaustion,” Tim says, and forces a smile as he watches Jason scout curiously around his room. It had been remarkable difficult, for a variety of reasons; Tim’s hoard hadn’t been specifically limited to only the photographs, but anything and everything that he had lovingly gathered in his room— souvenirs that his parents had brought from him when they returned from their trips to exotic places, LEGO pieces that Tim had found while on walks, fanmail that people had sent to Robin… Tim is a hoarder, but there isn’t a single thing in his room that doesn’t mean something, and he’s deeply attached to all of it.)

—and the sunbathing—

(“So,” Jason says. As usual, he sounds weirded out.

Sometimes, when one is a giant fire-breathing reptile, one must do as the reptiles do. Really, Jason should just be glad that Tim isn’t shedding a 20-foot long snakeskin.

Tim lowers his sunglasses, propping up onto his elbows as he gives Jason an unimpressed stare. “You’re kind of interrupting my basking, Jason.”

“What are you, a fucking reptile?” Jason asks, and sounds mostly confused. Tim’s breath catches in his throat, hard enough that Tim actually chokes for a moment and has to cough to clear it out. “It’s like seven in the morning and you’re lying on a rock.”

Actually, it’s one of the best decorative rocks in the garden of the Manor. In the morning sunlight, it becomes such a delightful temperature; Tim really could lie there all day, if he didn’t have responsibilities and keen-eyed siblings who would put two and two together.

“You ought to try it some time,” he says casually to a baffled Jason as he lifts his sunglasses back into place. “Sunbathing on rocks, I mean. Apparently, it’s great for meditation.” He’s just making shit up, at this point, but Jason actually looks like he’s considering it.

“Huh,” Jason says, and tilts his head slightly to stare thoughtfully at the rock next to Tim’s. “Who knows. Maybe I will.”)

—and who could forget Tim’s worst habit: literally having no concept of his own size, on occasion.

(“So you’re telling me,” Jason says, because he just really won’t let up today, “that you were Robin this long, and you still can’t gauge the distance from one building to another?”

Tim scratches the back of his head sheepishly, using his bo staff to launch himself back to his feet. The truth is, dragons aren’t exactly known for their refined grace. They’re more known for plodding into a farmer’s field, snatching up a mouthful of their sheep, potentially open-fire roasting said sheep right then and there with one sharp column of fire, and then vanishing, only to come back when more sheep are present. They aren’t often masters of stealth and sneaking around, and Tim’s always struggled to be at least a little more agile when he’s out in the field with Bruce.

At Jason’s tone, the dragon huffs, snorting out a sharp, warning puff of smoke. Tim rolls his eyes, because what’s he going to do? Set Jason on fire for being— well, correct?

It’s true the problem is getting a lot worse, though. Tim really hopes that his dragon can be satiated long enough to vanish back into the human form, once he has his transformation; he isn’t exactly looking forward to spending the rest of his life in a cave, to be honest, and also really hopes none of his new family actually does see the transformation.

“I guess I can’t,” he says flatly, wishing not for the first time that he had wings just so he could bypass all of this grappling bullshit to begin with.

Jason sighs. “You’re weird, Red,” he says, and Tim tenses. “I mean, you have all these weird habits, you’re always acting shifty as hell, and now— this? I’m not buying it. You got something else going on.”

“Last I checked, having weird habits and acting shifty weren’t crimes,” Tim says, but there is a sort of levity to his tone as he gestures his bo staff at Jason. “And I don’t think you’re the authority on this kind of issue, Jason.”

Jason shrugs. “Just calling it like I see it.”)

There comes this moment where Tim’s kind of ready to just spill the beans about being a dragon.

The Manor has a huge cave, anyway, so maybe if he transforms, he can just… live in the cave? Granted, it’s meant specifically for Batman operations, but would they actually be that angry about having to share their base with a dragon? Tim could be useful, as a dragon— he’d be a great source of transport, he’d be able to heat up anything on short notice, and honestly, he feels like it would be a solid boost for Batman’s reputation of being a weird, Eldritch creature, because— Well, Tim kind of is a weird, Eldritch creature.

Gotham has room enough for two of them, right?

He dithers outside of Bruce’s office for so long that even Damian grits out a, “Go in or go somewhere else, Drake, your pacing is giving me a headache,” which is at least the push Tim needs to actually knock on the door.

“Come in,” Bruce says from inside, even-toned and unhurried, his voice a little muffled— even still, Tim can hear it clear through the door. When he pushes the door, Bruce is leaning up against his desk, and he looks up from the folder in his hands to smile at Tim in the way someone smiles when they’re kind of tense but still trying to keep up appearances just for the sake of everyone around them. Bruce tends to look a little constipated with his emotions on a good day, let alone when he’s actually a little tense about something.

“Is… Everything okay?” Tim asks, forgetting about the whole dragon situation when he feels that shift in the air. He doesn’t think he’s as good at deciphering Bruce’s behavior as Dick is, still, but Dick’s basically an expert, so Tim settles for just trying to figure out what might be going on in Bruce’s head. “You look, uh…”

He pauses, and then tactfully says, “A little concerned.”

Bruce snaps the folder shut with his thumb and forefinger. “It’s nothing to worry about, for now. Just a heads-up from Clark about something that we may have to look out for, but it isn’t pressing.”

In Bruce language, that means I’ve already planned out seventy-three different attack and defense strategies, but I’m going to be keeping that to myself until it’s just a little inconvenient for all of you.

“Anyway,” Bruce says, and lays the folder down before crossing his arms across his chest and arching an eyebrow at Tim. “What did you want to talk to me about, Tim?”

Tim glances up, and just like that, he loses every ounce of courage. In the reflective surface of the swords hanging above the fireplace, he catches a glimpse of his eyes, his real eyes, and they look wild— blazing yellow threaded through with molten orange and red, and the sharp black slit of a pupil carving through like a chasm.

Is that what I’ll look like when I transform? He thinks, and the confession dissipates in his throat like smoke, like ash. It’s terrifying. He’s terrifying. He might actually be terrifying. And the last thing he wants to do is terrify the people who care about him.

“Are you,” he coughs, looking for something else to ask him. From downstairs, he picks up a thread of conversation; a lot of it usually fades into the background, given how long he’s had the ability to— hear everything around him, but if he focuses, he can—

“Er— Movie night,” he finishes feebly, rubbing the back of his head and averting his gaze from the swords so he doesn’t have to make eye contact with himself anymore. It’s unnerving, actually. “Are you joining us for that? I think Duke picked out the movie this time.”

Bruce’s eyebrows arch, and he examines Tim’s expression. “I planned to, yes.” He pauses as he pulls away from the edge of the desk to stand up straight, and lowers his arms to his sides as if he’s trying to come off less imposing. In actuality, he kind of looks like Slenderman now, but Tim doesn’t say that. “Are you sure that’s all you wanted to talk about, Tim?”

“No,” Tim says, and surprises himself. “Actually, I did want to tell you something else, but I don’t think I’m… Ready to, yet.” He averts his gaze to the floor, because it’s hard to hold eye contact. It’s hard to hold eye contact when he’s worried Bruce might look into him, see the creature beating its wings against Tim’s lungs, raring to be something bigger than Tim’s human form, snarling and gnashing its teeth against Tim’s bones. “It’s just— I’m different, B. And I don’t know if you’ll—” He hesitates, daring a glance back up toward Bruce. “I don’t know if it’s okay that I am.”

Bruce blinks at Tim, and he looks a little— startled, if Tim had to place the emotion. In between beats, though, Bruce’s expression flattens out again into something impenetrable.

“Whenever you want to talk about it,” Bruce says carefully, and moves forward so the distance between them shrinks, “I’ll listen, Tim.”

“Okay,” Tim says, knee-jerk, and wants to smack himself for not being able to just get it out. It’s hard, though, with Bruce— he wants to believe that this isn’t a world-shattering secret, that this wouldn’t be the end. But it could be, right? What if he can’t transform back, and he is a dragon forever? It would definitely be the end of Red Robin, that’s for sure. It would be the end of everything Tim had ever known.

It’s terrifying to consider. Robin— or some derivative of Robin —has been tied to Tim’s identity for so long, just like the dragon. He doesn’t know what he’ll do without it.

“Before you even tell me, though, I can assure you that it is okay,” Bruce says, and Tim’s gaze flicks back to him. He pauses, and then says, “Well, unless you’re smoking.”

Tim sighs. Loudly. “That was my breath, because I was cold!” He protests, following Bruce to the home theater and cursing Stephanie.

As he passes one of the mounted pieces of silver on the wall, he swears he sees something gleaming ebony-black against his hair, but— that has to be his imagination, right?

Either way, he grabs his hoodie from his room. Just in case.

“Why the fuck do you have your hood up?”

Tim ducks Jason’s swipe, scooting closer to Cass in an attempt to get away.

“Oh, why? Because you’re the only person who can have a hood?” He snarks, pulling the hood further up. It’s entirely possible that he’d just imagined what he’d seen in the silver, but why risk it? At least for now, what he thinks could be horns are carefully concealed underneath shaggy hair desperately in need of a trim and the hood Tim’s currently trying to hide behind.

What he figures is, this must be some sort of stress reaction. The weight of the secret has been weighing on him an awful lot more than usual, lately, and more importantly— the guilt of keeping it from his family.

Jason considers the question for a moment, and then extends a leg to kick Tim in the side. “Yeah, actually. I trademarked that shit.”

“Let him be,” Dick says, shoving Jason’s leg and winding an arm around Tim.

“Or kick him harder,” Damian suggests with a little smirk, tapping through the movie options until he lands on Shrek. Tim levels him with an unimpressed look and grimaces up at the screen. Usually, he would have loved a Shrek rewatch, but he’s feeling a little sensitive about the whole dragon issue.

Unfortunately, it’s Steph’s choice today, and Steph almost always chooses dragons, ironically. The only way she could’ve been more on the nose is if she’d straight up chosen How to Train Your Dragon, which is also one of her favorite movies. Tim might have just stress-transformed right then and there from the sheer irony of it all.

“Shrek,” Steph declares, as Tim had expected. “A classic. Can’t go wrong with a classic.”

Tim peers out from under his hood, glaring balefully up at the screen.

“Everything okay?” Cass asks from where she’s sitting above him on the couch, one of her legs looped lazily over Tim’s shoulder. Even though he can’t see her face from the angle he’s sitting at, he can hear the intent in her voice, the pointedness. It’s just like Cass, really, to know when Tim is trying to bullshit his problems away.

“I’m okay.” Tim pats her ankle comfortingly, even though he really feels anything but okay. “Just a little tired.”

Dick sighs, drawing his arm back and flicking the side of Tim’s head gently. “That happens when you don’t get enough sleep, Tim,” he says, lightly admonishing. “Maybe you should take it easy on the casework for the next couple days and catch up on your rest.”

If I don’t have something to do, I’ll go crazy, Tim thinks. And if I go crazy, I might transform into a great big fucking dragon.

Bruce grunts. “All of you should get more sleep.”

“Pot, kettle,” Babs says, burying a hand in her popcorn and gesturing an accusing fist toward Bruce. “You probably sleep the least out of all of us. You’re awake almost all the time.”

“Quite right, Master Bruce,” Alfred says flatly, placing several mugs of hot chocolate topped off with whipped cream and tiny chocolate shavings on the coffee table. “Your sleep schedule is simply dreadful.”

“Thanks, Alfred.”

“You guys would all get your sleep if you were day patrollers,” Duke says with a sigh, reaching an arm back to pilfer popcorn from Barbara’s bowl. “Unlike you guys, I actually have to get sleep if I want to patrol.”

Tim watches the steam curl off the hot chocolate, abruptly reminded of his steam-puffing inclinations, and pales slightly. With Dick on one side of him, Cass’ leg over his shoulder, and Jason’s tree-trunk-leg planted firmly on Tim’s other side, Tim realizes he’s actually feeling a little claustrophobic, a little warm, and now he has a little bit of a headache—

Or. Wait. That doesn’t feel like a headache.

Tim slides a hand beneath the hood subtly, extending one thumb slightly, and— it bumps into something hard and glossy. Something too hard and glossy to be anything other than a fucking. horn.

He shakes off Cass’ leg, lurching unsteadily to his feet, and staggers back a few feet from Dick’s inquisitive, outstretched fingers.

“Everything okay, Tim?” Dick asks, concerned, and his voice is a little hazy in Tim’s ears. It’s lost under the thump of Tim’s heart, pounding in his ears like a war drum, and blurs slightly at the end into something incomprehensible.

“Yeah. Bathroom.” Tim says tersely, and his voice is a little raspy around his heart in his throat. He’s fucking sweating underneath the hoodie, but he can’t risk taking it off- especially not now, when the hood feels like it’s starting to rise an inch or so off the top of his head from his growing horns. Once he gets into the bathroom and slams the door shut, he immediately yanks the hood back— and makes the sort of sound he’d imagine a parrot would make if it were being strangled.

Surprisingly, it isn’t the small— but slowly growing —horns curling out from underneath his hair that first triggers the sound, but rather— his eyes.

They’re the same eyes he’d seen earlier, except now they’re on him. The same blazing yellow, threaded through with orange and red. The same, chasm-like black slit gaping open, splitting across Tim’s eyes. His vision doesn’t feel any different right now— Well, no, that isn’t true, actually. Things feel a little brighter, a little sharper, a little more colorful. He wonders if dragons have more cones to see colors than humans. He wonders if dragons can see in the dark.

He wonders how the hell he’s supposed to explain any of this to his family.

Even from here, he can hear Dick’s concerned voice— low, but not low enough to escape Tim’s new, sharper hearing.

“I’m a little worried about Tim,” he says, and Tim stares into the mirror, at his new eyes, and feels himself breaking out into a sweat. “Don’t you guys think he’s acting a little weird?”

“He’s always weird,” Jason says around a mouthful of popcorn, with some obnoxious chewing in between. “He’s probably all constipated over a case. Or maybe he has an embarrassing injury or something.”

“Though I’m loath to agree with Todd, he’s correct,” Damian says. “Drake is always weird.”

“No.” Cass says, in that arch, definitive way. When she speaks, everyone falls silent; even Jason stops chewing for a moment, which is nice, because Tim had kind of been contemplating hacking off his ears to not have to deal with the noise anymore. The bonus of having sensitive ears, it would seem, is also very much the downside of having sensitive ears. “Not that. Something is wrong.”

Tim tenses. There’s a beat, and then Barbara laughs, if not slightly uneasily.

“Come on, Cass. When you put it like that.”

“Something is wrong,” Cass repeats, even more firmly.

Tim wants to sneak out of there and stealth his way upstairs. He wants to. But if he ditches the movie night now, he risks one— or more —of them coming after him and catching him out, and at least the theater room is dark. He opens the door, making sure it slams into the opposite wall loud enough to silence any conversation and further speculation. On his way back to the movie room, he snatches a pair of sunglasses off the counter in the kitchen and shoves them onto his face hastily before skulking back into his space between Dick’s arm and Jason’s leg.

“Tim.” Jason says. “You are not wearing sunglasses inside like a douchebag.”

Tim shrinks down into his hood, watching the dragon thump around her castle furiously. He kind of gets where she’s coming from, even if he’s trying particularly hard not to relate to her at the moment.

“I have a headache,” he says through gritted teeth, and feels sweat trickle down the side of his face and drip off his chin. He’s overheating. And if he keeps overheating, he might actually breathe out real flames this time, not just smoke.

And there’s something else bothering him too, actually— the tiniest scraping sound, like the shuffle of soft feet against the floors of the Manor. But none of his siblings are moving, and every time Tim looks right where he thinks the sound is emanating from, he’s greeted with nothing.

(Maybe he actually is just going crazy.)

He’s about to give up on trying to act like everything is fine and make a break for his room when the floor explodes.

As it turns out, that thing they say about bad things coming in threes comes true, right then and there: the horns, the eyes, and— oh, right. Extraterrestrial fucking assassins.

Extraterrestrial fucking assassins who are after Bruce Wayne, which makes things all that much worse.

Tim had kind of always known that the security in the Manor was sort of piss-poor; this is largely because every single one of them had managed to both sneak in and out of the Manor at one point or another without tripping a single alarm, and he’s also pretty sure they all have their own designated secret entrances in and out. He’s also secretly positive that Bruce isn’t actually afraid of anyone who might break into the Manor, one way or another, because of the whole being Batman thing, but he does know one thing that pretty quickly locks Bruce down— when his seemingly civilian children end up dragged into the mess.

And this? This is a pretty spectacular mess.

So. The ground explodes. Which is to say that there’s a small boom that splits through the floor, and three identical masked figures flicker into existence in front of the enormous screen, exactly where Tim had heard shuffling earlier. So maybe those ears really are good for something, and hey, wouldn’t it have been nice if Tim could have figured this out earlier, maybe? And what the fuck is even the point of having good hearing if he doesn’t do anything about it?

He doesn’t have a lot of time to lambast himself, though, because he’s distracted by Bruce pretty much immediately leaping into action to stand in front of as many of them as he can. Where he can’t reach— to where Barbara is sat on one end, and Damian on the other —he spreads his arms wide to try to encompass all of them.

“State your business,” he says coldly. He’s probably already got a plan. Tim’s trying to formulate his own plan, even though he kind of feels like his brain’s become home to an entire nest of aggressive fire ants. He can feel his horns start to stab at the inside of the hood, and when he lifts his hands to his mouth, he realizes he’s puffing out smoke, soft and cloudy.

Jason rears forward, always itching for a fight, only to knock his leg against Dick’s warning arm. Tim shifts, glancing upward slightly to see Cass’ eyes narrow sharply at the three figures. Damian’s scowling darkly at the intruders, half-crouched into a defensive position. Most of his family is ready to throw down, costumes be damned, and Tim’s stuck trying to make sure nobody finds out he’s actually a giant, fire-breathing fucking lizard. It’s pretty much the farthest thing from ideal that he could literally ever imagine.

One of the intruders tilts their head, insect-like mask betraying absolutely nothing. “You are Bruce Wayne,” they say, and it’s not really a question. Which is never a good thing. “You are an acquaintance of the Batman.”

Again, not really a question.

“You will call him,” the intruder says. “You will call him now.”

“Father,” Damian starts, but Bruce shakes his head.

“Why do you need him?” he asks, his tone belying nothing of what he’s thinking. From behind, though, Tim can see the muscles along his back tense, as if he’s preparing himself for a hit.

There’s a slight buzz— almost a chitter —as the intruders seem to confer with one another. The one that Tim presumes is in charge turns back to them.

“We will kill him,” they say. “Bring the Batman here. We are assassins, and we will kill him.”

So now, whoever of Tim’s family wasn’t gearing up for a fight is about ready to throw down. Naturally, the answer seems to relieve Bruce, though, who lowers his arms slightly at the notion that nobody but him seems to be in immediate danger.

“And if you do not bring him, we will kill your kin,” the intruder continues. Their gridded, insect-like eyes seem to gaze past Bruce at the rest of them, gathered on the couch. “We will kill all of your kin until there is no one left to kill.”

(Ah. Well. That—)

Bruce tenses again.

(—That complicates things, just a little bit.)

“There’s no need for that,” Bruce says tightly, taking a step toward the assassins. Though they don’t move, the chitters increase in volume until they’re almost a buzz, and Tim hates the sound. It gets underneath his skin— and really, it would’ve gotten under his skin even if he weren’t partially a dragon. As a dragon, though, it’s about one hundred times worse.

“Father,” Damian repeats. He’s risen to his full height by now, fully ready to fight, and so has Jason; Dick’s clearly trying to hold the both of them until he figures out his next step, which is almost certainly not the same as Cass’ next step, and most likely not the same as Steph’s next step, for sure. They all have different ways of dealing with crises, which is making it really hard for them to know what everyone else is thinking.

“There does not have to be a need for that,” the assassin says, in that same, flat, tone. “If you summon the Batman.”

“Fine,” Bruce says tersely, and makes a show of pulling his phone out. “Fine. I’ll contact him. He may be off-planet, though— he doesn’t always answer.”

“It would be in your best interest if he answered,” the assassin says. “Or we will have to kill your kin, Bruce Wayne.”

“Yes,” Bruce says. “I understood that.”

“We will kill your kin until—”

“Yes,” Bruce says, frustrated. “Until no one is left. I understand. They’re innocent in this, you don’t have to bring them into this.”

“Much can be accomplished through the exploitation of one’s kin,” the assassin says. “And today, it will be used to eliminate the Batman.”

For a moment, there’s a sort of tense silence; Tim glances up at Jason, who’s staring daggers at the intruders from underneath his shock of white hair, the baring of his teeth much less a grin and much more a threat. His hair has actually been growing out slightly, enough to sort of fall over his eyes, and though it would make anyone else look somewhat less intimidating, Jason actually looks kind of scarier. It’s the effect of the white hair partially hiding the lurid fury in his expression, Tim thinks; right now, though, there’s absolutely no question of how Jason’s feeling.

Getting caught out in general sucks. Getting caught out as civilians sucks even worse. There’s a new sort of helplessness to the whole affair. Duke’s tensed in a pair of sweatpants and a tank top, for fuck’s sake; Steph’s hair is pulled up in a pale purple scrunchie. Babs is wearing a pair of fuzzy slippers with little rabbit ears. They’re civilians. They’re civilians dressed up for civilian things.

And Tim is dressed in a hood and sunglasses and sweating balls at the moment, absolutely positive he might die of heat stroke. Nobody else is daring to move even a muscle given that they don’t actually know how quickly the assassins could eliminate them, but he can’t help himself; slowly, he lifts his hands to try to lower his hood, horns be damned. He needs some air, or he’s going to start belting flames or something insane.

The second he even moves, though, the chitters stop.

And then— Tim feels himself start to … float.

His gasp chokes out into a little wheeze of a sound as he’s hoisted up off the floor; immediately, Dick and Cass grab for his leg, but he’s too far out of range in just a matter of seconds, and their fingers grasp at air. There’s a buzzy sort of light surrounding him, something staticky and painless, but Tim realizes he’s still somehow paralyzed. He can’t twitch even a finger, and any sound he’d been about to make just about vanishes into his throat.

Half-suspended, half-upside down, Tim feels panic start to settle in. The glasses are frozen just like the rest of him, which means they’re at least not going to slip off of his face, and neither is the hood off his head, but whatever he’s feeling inside is very much still active. He can feel his lungs expanding, can feel his nose start to throb sharply. None of it feels like a reaction to the assassins so much as his inner dragon trying to break free of Tim’s new shackles; something inside of him is expanding, and fast.

For one wild, insane moment, even as Tim hears Jason and Steph’s overlapping shouts demanding for him to be let down, Tim kind of hopes they don’t let him down. He’s pretty positive that the second he regains control of his limbs, he’s going to turn.

With increasing urgency, Bruce says, “Let him down. Kill me first if you have to kill someone. Batman won’t come any faster if you hurt any of them.”

“We will kill your kin,” the leader says. “We will—”

“Yes,” Bruce says— almost a snap. “I’m well-aware of your threat.”

The only parts of Tim that he can move are his eyes. He swivels his gaze downward to see his family gathered beneath him, watching him with varying degrees of worry. He hates that he’s in this position— vulnerable, trapped, the cause of concern. At the same time, though, this position is the only thing keeping the dragon at bay.

There’s a roar from inside of him. It slams up against his teeth, stopped only by the paralysis. The dragon really isn’t enjoying being contained at the moment.

Bruce steps forward. This time, even from his position far above the rest of his family, Tim can see the threat in Bruce’s movement. There’s much more purpose in this step, and it’s not exactly welcoming. Tim would have felt oddly comforted by Bruce’s anger if he hadn’t been pretty sure that he’d probably never see his family after being let out of the paralysis, after transforming.

“You.” The assassin says, ignoring Bruce. “You … What are you?”

Tim’s throat closes.

Bruce stops in his tracks, his gaze flicking from the assassins to Tim’s suspended form.

And everyone goes silent.

“We were told there would be ten humans,” the assassin says. The inflection of their voice changes, finally— infinitesimally, but there’s a new tone there. Something that sounds almost— “Bruce Wayne. Richard Grayson. Jason Todd. Barbara Gordon. Tim Drake. Cassandra Cain. Stephanie Brown. Damian Wayne. Duke Thomas. Alfred Pennyworth.”

“Always a delight to be included,” Alfred says, drier than the desert. Tim wants to laugh. He wants to cry. He wants to scream.

“Who is this?” The assassin says, this time less to Tim, who still can’t speak, and more to Bruce. “What is this?”

“I ask the same every day,” Damian mutters. Tim’s so glad he has his sense of humor, after everything. It would really have been a shame if he didn’t.

“That’s— Tim,” Bruce says, sounding a little confused. “That’s Tim Drake.”

For a moment, there’s silence— and then the chitters pick up again, frantic and uncertain and loud. The buzzing is so intense it feels like a hundred needles stabbing at the underside of Tim’s skull, banging around his brain. He wants to claw his ears right off to not have to hear the awful. grinding. chittering.

“Impossible,” the assassin says, and the little holographic mirrors in their insect-like eyes glitter. “Tim Drake is a human. This is the information we were given.”

“Your eyes are practically three-fourths the size of your ugly-ass faces,” Jason snarls, impatient. When Jason gets impatient, he gets pissed— right now, he looks like he’s about to pop like a firecracker. His hands twitch at his sides, like he’s trying to grasp around weapons that he doesn’t have. “And you still can’t tell that he’s a human? What the hell is wrong with you?”

“Impossible,” the assassin says again. “What trickery is this? Where is Tim Drake?”

Heat pulses in a wave from Tim’s core, blazing out along his fingertips. His back starts to itch, something ferocious and terrible and unignorable. If he were free of the paralysis, he thinks he’d be writhing, trying desperately to ease the tingling spreading along his shoulder blades and lower back.

“He’s right there,” Dick says, and though his tone and expression are more controlled than Jason’s, he’s terse at best. “That’s Tim.”

Bruce hasn’t said anything for a long moment; he’s just staring up at Tim, and Tim can practically see the gears turning in Bruce’s mind. He’s putting together what Tim hadn’t said earlier, in his office. He’s putting together the sunglasses, and the hood. He’s putting it together, but he isn’t sure what to make of it, which Tim can’t really blame him for, because who the fuck would just— expect Tim to be a dragon?

Tim really can’t believe his life right now, actually.

“Lies,” the assassin says, and their pitch swoops up into— well, something angry is the best way Tim would label it. They sound deeply inconvenienced, as if the mismatch between the information they received and what they’re actually seeing is really stressing them out. Tim’s not exactly sure what their sensors are telling them, but he’s pretty sure it’s not actually revealing what he is, or he probably would’ve been caught out by now— or at least had the accusation leveled at him. Instead, he’s being rotated like a rotisserie chicken, examined at all angles by the assassin. “This is not a human. Ergo, this is not Tim Drake.”

Tim feels himself being lifted even higher— high enough that if he were dropped from this height, he’d probably shatter something important, or maybe even—

Well.

The second roar hits the back of his teeth so hard it nearly rattles his entire skull. The heat is almost unbearable, by now. Even through the blazing agony of his inner dragon pitching the biggest tantrum imaginable, he can still hear Bruce.

“Let him down, and we can figure this out,” Bruce says, and now the urgency is pretty much palpable. He sounds like he’s speaking through his teeth. “That is Tim. I’m sure whatever this is has a perfectly reasonable explanation.”

“We were not informed about a non-human,” the assassin says, and the chitters are so loud it’s almost difficult to hear over them. “We were not informed of this.”

Cool, Tim thinks. I’m probably going to die, and it’s because some weird extraterrestrial bug assassins were given the wrong bit of information.

The dragon inside snarls. Tim really needs to stop bringing up death; the dragon seems to have a raging survival instinct, and it’s getting so bad that he thinks he might crack right through the paralysis and plummet to his death if he doesn’t tread carefully.

“He is not a creature,” Cass says vehemently. “He is Tim.”

“It is not human.” The assassin responds, detached, as if stating a fact.

“Yes, he is,” Steph says, and Tim can practically hear her clenched fists. “He’s completely, 100%, absolutely, without a doubt, a human!”

There’s a long, stretching silence. Everything inside of Tim stops for a moment— the heat, the pulsing, the itching. For one long, blissful moment, Tim thinks the statement may have actually offended the dragon enough to silence it.

Actually— the opposite sort of happens. And the first sign Tim has that Steph might have unintentionally fucked him over is that he hears an almost inaudible crack.

And then the paralysis shatters.

That’s really the best word Tim has for what happens; the light holding him in place cracks, splitting and spraying off into thousands of fragments that dissipate immediately. Tim hangs in the air for a moment, suspended almost comically, and then he plummets.

He’s too shocked to even scream as he hurtles back toward the ground, amidst the panicked yells of his family, amidst the howling, raging warmth that pulses through his body like the pulse of a blazing supernova. Tim’s chest snaps into something tinier than a marble and then expands to what feels like the size of a small universe, and his lungs seem to stretch.

No— all of him is stretching.

The sound that erupts out of Tim almost puts the word roar to shame. It’s an absolute bellowing scream-wail hybrid that shakes the entire room, from the chandelier to the movie screen to every little gothic sconce lining the wall; Tim feels it down to his bones, even as they expand and pull. He writhes, buckling inwards as his back splits, making room for the wings he knows have been lying in stasis, waiting. When they spread, they literally smash through what Tim is pretty sure are the walls, but it’s kind of hard to tell, because he’s very much focused on literally everything else. His mouth is suddenly full of teeth that are both too long and too sharp, his hands are no longer hands, and he’s pretty sure that despite having fallen a pretty sizable distance, his head just busted up through the goddamn ceiling. The sunglasses all but explode into tiny black pieces that boink off his now-scaly head.

When it all stops, Tim looks down through the ceiling he just destroyed, at the family and three assassins gathered around what he’s pretty sure is— one of his feet, which looks pretty fucking big right about now, with those giant talons for added size.

“Oh my god,” he wants to say. All that comes out is a garbled whine, though. Not even a roar, but a pitiful little scrape of a sound that makes even Tim wince.

Beneath him, everyone is just— silent. Tim so badly wants to escape, flee, but he can’t even stretch his wings without smacking something. He’s so big that he’s pretty much swallowed most of the space in the room; his back and front legs are squished uncomfortable against the slightly bulging walls, his wings awkwardly crunched between his back, the ceiling, and two walls, and his head is more or less stuck just above the next floor. His horns are so long that they almost span half of the storage room, which he knows is the storage room because he’s pretty sure one of his horns skewered a couple of cardboard boxes.

On the plus side, though, when he punches out a panicked breath, the air actually sparks in front of him. So now, maybe he can finally toast his damn breakfast without needing an actual toaster.

Or maybe all he’ll be toasting is a sheep, because he definitely can’t live here anymore. Even from up here, he can very well see the white, shocked faces of his family— and he’s pretty sure the assassins aren’t faring much better either, even though he can’t see their faces.

Even though Bruce is just as white as the rest of them, he never misses an opportunity; when he makes the signal, the rest of them jump into action to make quick work of the stunned assassins. There’s a moment where Tim moves a talon and accidentally ends up putting it through one of the assassins, but fortunately, from where he’s looking, it doesn’t look fatal. He might be more deadly in this form, and absolutely unaware of his own strength, but he doesn’t think he can stomach the thought of killing someone literally five seconds after his first transformation ever.

The assassin he shish kebabs doesn’t look great, though. He’s really going to need medical attention.

“Well,” Damian says loftily once they’ve incapacitated the other two assassins, and Tim shifts slightly to both shake the assassin off his claw and get a better look at the scene downstairs. “I never thought I’d say this, but perhaps the name Drake was rather apt.”

Dick just shakes his head wordlessly.

“Tim… Is that really you?” he asks, but the hand he’s resting against Tim’s leg feels— gentle. And it isn’t what Tim had expected.

Gingerly, he lowers his head as far as it can go, about halfway down his body; still, his new snout is big enough to reach Dick if he stretches, and he bumps it against Dick with a little more force than he’d intended and ends up knocking him backwards on accident.

“What the fuck,” Jason says, which seems to be the consensus. “He’s a fucking dragon. What the fuck? Is anyone else seeing this?”

Steph wordlessly reaches out to stroke a hand over the scales along Tim’s flank and shakes her head. “I— how?” she asks eventually, and Tim twists his head back around to look at her. When his eyes lock onto hers, Steph actually shivers, and Tim tenses immediately. There’s nowhere for him to go, though, nowhere for him to flee; he can’t even move his legs enough to get even marginally more comfortable. Even though he’s sure they’re scared of him, he’s somehow even more scared of them.

He snorts once, panicked; at first, nothing really happens, but when he snorts again, louder this time, huge plumes of smoke billow out of his nostrils. He huffs, trying to turn around, trying to break out of this claustrophobic little hole, and accidentally knocks Duke and Barbara’s wheelchair over in his haste. Then, he tries to turn back around, and nearly takes Jason out, too, because of course he does. And he can’t even fix it, because he’s too goddamn big to even move one singular talon enough to help—

“Tim. Calm down.” Bruce says, and Tim swivels back around to lock his new eyes onto Bruce. He’s expecting Bruce to flinch, or step away from him— but he doesn’t. He just stands there, still, unyielding, one hand extended slightly. “It’s alright, Tim. We’ll figure this out.”

Tim snorts again, skeptical. There’s nothing to fix. He can’t stay here, with them; he has to go. He’s a danger to them, to himself, to society. Maybe he can still find Janet, wherever she is— maybe he can live out the rest of his dragon days in some cave, or—

“Tim.” Bruce says, and Tim startles slightly when he realizes Bruce is actually touching him— he has a hand against Tim’s belly, and he’s patting it lightly. “You need to calm down. You’re going to start a fire.”

Tim blinks at him, and glances around to see that the room’s actually still slightly hazy with smoke. He lowers his head, chagrined, and reaches out to try to butt his nose against Bruce.

Bruce pats the side of Tim’s head. Though his gaze is steady, his hand is a little uncertain; as usual, Tim can’t read anything underneath the unflappable exterior. Fuck, Tim just turned into a dragon, and Bruce is acting like this is just a slightly weirder Sunday than usual.

But will it really be okay? Will it really be okay if he knows Bruce doesn’t really welcome— whatever the hell Tim is? Metahuman, loosely? There’s exactly no human in him at the moment, like at all.

“Tim,” Bruce says, and hesitates. “Is— Is this what you were trying to tell me earlier?”

Tim huffs, and his wings tremble in distress.

“I thought you were going to tell me you were gay,” Bruce says a little wryly. Tim’s glad he can find the humor in the situation. Also— well. That might not be entirely… wrong, either, but— now really isn’t the time for that.

“So— are you just going to stay like this?” Jason demands, and swats a hand against Tim’s side. Tim barely feels it, but he still shifts one talon to trip Jason. “Oi—”

“Or maybe…” Bruce says, watching Tim’s wings vibrate frantically, “Maybe you don’t know how to change back?”

Tim’s gaze snaps back down to him. Whatever Bruce sees in Tim’s face, he seems to take as confirmation.

“Okay,” Bruce says. “Can you close your eyes, Tim?”

Skeptically, Tim fidgets around a little in place, tossing his head back and accidentally putting another hole in the wall with one of his horns.

“Do you trust me?” Bruce asks him calmly, and the steadiness of his voice— actually, it’s oddly soothing. “I can’t help you if you don’t trust me.”

You shouldn’t trust me, Tim thinks wildly. All I’ve done is lie.

“It will be okay, Tim,” Cass says, and pats one of his talons gently. “Everything will be okay.”

Dick also has a hand against his side, and he smiles a shaky but reassuring little smile. “We’ll figure everything out together, Tim. Don’t worry.”

Tim feels his defenses lower; they’ve always been a dangerous combination. He ducks again, prodding his nose against Duke gently.

“It’s fine, it’s fine,” Duke says dismissively, helping Barbara back into her wheelchair. “It was an accident, right?”

“It’s okay, Tim,” Bruce says. “Just close your eyes.”

Tim huffs out a low, uncertain breath. He closes his eyes and lets them vanish behind his eyelids.

“Just focus on my breathing,” Bruce says, and Tim does; he listens to Bruce’s breaths, counts them, matches them. He can feel his own breaths start to even out, start to sync in time with Bruce’s. He doesn’t dare open his eyes, but he can feel his shoulders pull in slightly, can feel his back straighten, can feel his teeth start to shrink. He knows something is happening, but he doesn’t know if he can look. He doesn’t know if he can handle seeing himself shrink back down, not from the height he’d been standing at.

Something wraps around him. There’s an overlap of voices, but they’re comforting. Tim feels nauseous, though, so he tucks his head into his knees and stays like that.

A hand against his back. “Tim, can you open your eyes?”

Reluctantly, Tim lifts his head. He realizes he’s not— wearing anything, actually, but he is wrapped in his hoodie, so he immediately pulls it all the way around himself in mortification. Someone that he thinks is Steph is nice enough to toss a blanket around him as well, so he’s not completely exposed.

The world spins for a moment when he cracks his eyes slightly, but steadies as they open fully.

Bruce takes in a sharp breath. “Ah,” he says, but recovers quickly and reaches down to squeeze Tim’s shoulder. “You’re back,” he says, and then hesitates. “Well—”

“It seems you have retained some of your… draconic characteristics, Master Timothy,” Alfred says neatly. Just by looking at him, Tim would never have been able to tell Alfred had just seen him turn into a giant fucking dragon. The people he lives with are so— weird, but so….

Wait.

“Uh— What do you mean?” Tim asks, his voice raspy. “What— What do you—”

Wordlessly, he picks up the silver tray Alfred had kept the hot chocolate on and gets a look at himself. The first things he sees are the horns, followed by slightly sharp teeth, small patches of scales, and—

“My eyes,” Tim moans, digging his nails into his face. “How am I supposed to be normal now?”

“Well, there’s nothing fucking normal about changing into a giant fucking dragon,” Jason says sharply. “Seriously, you didn’t think we deserved a heads-up? You didn’t think this would be important to mention?”

“Jason,” Bruce says, a warning.

“No, no. I really want to know his fucking reasoning!” Jason says, and gestures at the damaged room. Tim glances surreptitiously at the unconscious would-be assassins and grimaces at the bloody puncture wound one of them is sporting. “I somehow doubt he had no idea about this. He’s been doing weird shit for ages!”

“Jason.” This time it’s Dick, but Tim interrupts.

“He’s right,” he says, and coughs, hiding his eyes into his palm. “He’s right. I knew. But, uh— well. My mom changed, and she never changed back. She had to leave forever. I never saw her again. I didn’t think— Well, I thought if I changed into a dragon, I’d, uh.” His voice feels very small all of a sudden, even to his own ears. “Well. I thought I wouldn’t be able to stay here. And I’d have to go, too. I thought you all would— be scared of me, and. That was pretty scary. To me, I mean.” He clears his throat, embarrassed. “I– I would understand though, because I’m pretty inconvenient as a dragon, and…” He glances back at Duke and Barbara. “I could have really hurt someone.”

“That’s stupid as hell,” Steph says, and Tim feels her yank his hands away from his face. “That’s stupid as hell, Tim,” she says again, like she wants him to get it. “We could get hurt all the time.”

“You flinched when you saw my face,” Tim reminds her.

“Yeah, of course I flinched,” Steph says, and rolls her eyes. “You turned into a giant lizard, Tim. I was a little startled, sue me. But I love dragons, and you know that. My best friend being a dragon is sick. You owe me free rides forever.”

Tim makes a sharp, exasperated sound. “I can’t even exist like this,” he says flatly. “With the eyes, and the horns—”

“I’m sure we can figure out contacts for the eyes,” Bruce says mildly. “I’m not sure about the horns yet, but with our extensive tech and resources, we can probably—”

Duke cuts in. “He’s going to throw money at the problem until you can go out comfortably, Tim.” he says, and offers Tim a slightly shaky grin. It’s an attempt, for which Tim is more grateful than Duke could know.

“I detest both of your forms equally, Drake,” Damian says, which is truly comforting.

“And you’d better not even think of taking off,” Jason threatens. “You think we wouldn’t be able to see a giant-ass scaly lizard flapping around Gotham? You owe us. I don’t wanna ever heat up my own food again.”

Tim snorts; a tiny flame curls up in front of his face, dissipating just as easily as it had come to life. Jason arches an eyebrow, unimpressed.

“Pathetic,” he says. “You’d better figure out how to get a better flame so we can actually roast all our enemies— actual roasting though, not like, the verbal kind.”

“He won’t be using it for that,” Bruce interjects immediately.

“Killjoy,” Jason says darkly.

“I’ll fill in for your absence from WE for the next couple days while you lay low and figure out the— dragon stuff,” Barbara says, smiling at Tim. She looks a little disheveled, but thankfully unhurt.

“Thanks, Babs,” Tim says quietly, and rubs his eyes. “I don’t know. I’m not— It’s unpredictable. I could transform again. I could hurt someone. I could get discovered. I—”

“We’ll cross those bridges when we get there.” Bruce says quietly, and squeezes Tim’s shoulder, right over a patch of red scales.

Tim blinks fiercely at the ruined, plaster-covered carpet. He’d absolutely demolished the room, and even still, nobody is leaving. He won’t have to go off alone, the way his mother had. He won’t have to watch his family go the same way as Jack, dying without knowing his secret. He won’t have to hold his breath— at least not in the Manor.

He still has about 99 dragon problems.

But, he realizes with relief as Dick and Cass help him to his feet, keeping it from his family isn’t one of them.