Chapter Text
The problem with the “no metas in Gotham” rule was that, like so many of Batman’s rules, it was basically a lie. It was more, “no metas without Bruce’s explicit say so,” and frankly Clark and Diana and J’onn and some others had been around enough that they were comfortable showing up whenever they felt like it. Usually out of capes, but sometimes as heroes.
The rule also said nothing about the potential metas that already lived in Gotham, quietly avoiding the attention of the Dark Knight and his crew.
And it had never deterred a single villain.
At least, not that could be proved.
But people believed the rule worked, at least enough that it still got thrown around. Hell, even Tim mostly believed it, and he regularly ran into Ivy and Harley. Even Jason basically counted at this point, as far as Tim was concerned.
So it was almost twice as embarrassing as it was surprising when Tim’s patrol was interrupted one night by a noise, a light, and the sudden sensation of his knees and hips sitting really weird.
He’d gone from being comfortably crouched on the edge of a roof to slightly off balance, to way off balance as one part of his mind—trained, ingrained, habitual—tried to move limbs in a very specific way to catch a human, and another part of his brain—new, instinctual, untried—attempted to move Tim’s body differently.
The result was about what could be expected.
As a rule, Tim was careful with roof ledges, even after all these years, so his initial tumble took him onto a narrow balcony beneath him. Not at all gracefully. Cats, apparently, did not always land on their feet. At least, not when a human brain got in the way of evolution. And while he weighed considerably less as a…juvenile cat?—Tim still hit a ledge and a potted plant on his way down.
It was…not his best moment. He could admit that.
Dizzy, vision wrong in a way that felt too right to give Tim any idea of if he had an actual concussion, ears and tail twitching compulsively, Tim tried to get to his feet and was further embarrassed by how difficult it was.
He made it into an unsteady, four-legged standing position just as a door slid open and someone jabbed a broom at his face, hissing obscenities and lamenting their broken ceramic.
Tim yowled, trying to bat at the broom, wobbling wretchedly on his three remaining paws, and yelping when one brushed against a piece of the broken pot.
That new instinct took over then, pain overriding Tim’s attempts at control. He was up on the railing, twisting out of the way. He leapt as he felt the jab of the broom at his rear, only partially understanding what he was seeing, feeling.
The broom had been hell on his whiskers.
Instinct completed the first jump, as far as getting Tim to a fire escape. But when he’d tried to jump down from that railing to the landing, his human training had gauged the height and wanted Tim to roll.
Which was not how cats handled that sort of landing.
The broom person was laughing at him now, and Tim tried to swear at them, only to realize the yowling noise he made sounded so tiny and petulant it wasn’t worth remembering.
He hoped that wasn’t a phone. He really hoped no one was recording this.
The stairs were not the easy climb he’d hoped they’d be. He hadn’t had a lot of hope of finding the perpetrator when they hadn’t followed him down to catch him. Even if he’d been moving as quickly as he normally did he probably would have missed them.
But he’d definitely taken too long as a cat.
The roof was empty.
It was tempting to see if Tim could try and sniff the culprit out. Enough drunken meandering took Tim to where he’d been crouching, and he thought he could pick out his own scent.
But there were a lot of smells on the roof, and while instinct helped sort some, human memory others, so much was just…noise.
And that was before Tim got to the actual noises he was picking up now. The curve of the wind caught differently, that was the sound of traffic below, but too loud and too soft at once. There were the wisps of voices carrying up, but the bits and pieces didn’t mean anything at this height.
And the sensation of air against whiskers, the subtle shift when Tim did something as simple as move his head.
Well, that would take getting used to.
Tim wasn’t thinking about his tail. His whole back half really. He wasn’t ready to start parsing whether fur counted as “clothes” or if Tim was stranded in Gotham, unarmed and naked.
Okay, scratch that—ha—Tim had claws. They weren’t great, but they were something.
So, just naked.
Except he wasn’t thinking about it.
Wandering the roof until he felt more steady on his feet—turned out not thinking about moving helped a lot—Tim considered his best course of action.
It was, unfortunately, to find help.
This was magic, and while it might wear out on its own, more likely they’d need to call in a specialist. A specialist Tim could not call now that his comm was gone. His phone was at his apartment, but getting in could be tricky in this cat body and it would be faster and more reasonable to just ask. It would be embarrassing to admit to Bruce, Steph would never let Tim live it down, Cass would tease in her own way, Babs would save it for peak leverage, and Jason and Damian would be unbearable.
Dick would fuss and pity, which was almost as bad.
But Tim was a human, and a vigilante, and he had work to do.
So help it was.
Only.
Only Tim didn’t know where anyone was anymore.
Steph was probably wrapping up for the night, close-ish, but not heading back to the Cave and across some major thoroughfares Tim couldn’t imagine braving in his new body, even at this time of night. Bruce and Damian had the largest patrol area and covered the most ground, but they could be ending the night nearby or clear across the city. Batman at least had been that far out the last time Tim had checked in.
Jason…
Jason might be close. Ish. It would be awful, and Tim honestly didn’t know what would happen. Probably a lot of mocking, maybe a ride, and then Tim’s small, fragile body being thrown at Batman’s face while Jason laughed all the way home.
Not ideal, but better than nothing.
And he was probably the closest, given how much of Tim’s patrol route bordered Jason’s.
Dammit.
Well, Tim would look for Bruce, keep an ear out for Steph, and try and reach Jason’s most likely wrap up point.
In theory, even with this wobbly body, Tim should be able to find Red Hood before he wrapped up for the night.
Tim did not.
Walking wasn’t too bad as long as Tim didn’t think too hard, but jumping, even just tiny hops, was turning out to be a nightmare. Tim’s cat brain knew what it wanted to do, but years of training human limbs just kept getting in the way. Going was either slow or treacherous, and often both. Especially since Tim’s best bet for spotting anyone was to stay high. Lots more jumping at roof level than ground.
Fuck, he’d give up and just go for Selina’s if it wasn’t in the wrong part of town and impossible for Tim to enter in his current body.
Two hours and so many embarrassing stories later—thank goodness no one was watching—Tim had managed to find…no one.
And to trip down a set of fire escape stairs.
Next time he was just scooting backwards, damn his dignity.
Making little hissing noises and trying not to paw at his bruised nose, Tim froze when he heard a soft, “I know you’re there.”
Fuck, fuck, that was Damian.
The kid was a great little sneak: Tim hadn’t heard him on the roof at all. He could feel the metal of the fire escape shifting, could hear the tiny creaks that Damian mostly suppressed with sheer cussedness and no small amount of talent. There was the smell of the Robin suit, sweat and almost metal and something softer. The smell of Damian under that.
Now. Now that Tim was paying attention. He hadn’t noticed them before at all.
The opening salvo had seemed ominous, but as Tim pressed himself towards the building, trying to melt into the wall, hoping his low profile might protect him, Damian followed up with, “It’s alright. I am here to help.”
And Tim’s entire world flipped.
It wasn’t that Tim didn’t know. He’d seen Damian with his pets plenty. He’d seen Damian with all sorts of animals, and Damian effortlessly offered interest and compassion to all of them. Damian regularly tried to sneak home strays, especially cats since they were often small enough for him to stash easily.
It just hadn’t occurred to Tim that as a cat, Damian might be kind to Tim.
Of course, Damian had no idea who this cat was. And Tim was determined to keep it that way.
When Damian extended a hand, probably for sniffing, not grabbing, Tim knew his hiding efforts were pointless and made a dash for the stairs.
Only.
Only.
Tim’s fucking cat feet betrayed him. Again.
Damian sounded distressed as Tim tripped over his own paws and tail, seizing and spinning and oh shit that was the edge!
A few mad scrabbles weren’t enough for Tim’s claws to catch the grating and he was in free fall with no grapple—
Credit where credit was due, Tim acknowledged as his tiny animal heart tried to beat out of his chest, Damian’s silence was a consistent thing. It didn’t even register until Tim had been caught, cradled against Damian’s chest, that the kid had moved.
Tim was going to blame his inattentiveness on this new, weird body. And imminent death.
Those tended to be a bit distracting.
“Shhh,” Damian crooned, easing them back to the safety of the fire escape. “It’s alright. I have you.”
Tim let himself be comforted by that for maybe two second before remembering this was Damian and Tim needed to get out. Now.
Whatever affection Damian had for animals, it didn’t extend to Tim, and this was going to be embarrassing enough when Damian heard about it later. Only making this interaction as quick and forgettable as possible was going to spare Tim the humiliation and possible danger of Damian realizing he’d saved Tim’s life.
From the stupidest death possible.
There were more soothing noises as Tim started twisting, trying to claw his way up Damian’s shoulder to escape down…well, Tim would have to risk the stairs again, face first.
But that was better than the alternative.
It was a messy fight.
Damian had plenty of experience wrangling reluctant cats. Probably the only advantage Tim had was that he didn’t know how to move like a cat and was thus just slightly less predictable. He got onto the ground again, mostly in a flop, and would have been proud of himself if he hadn’t frozen at the worried gasp Damian made, instead of running like a sane person.
Cat.
Whatever.
That moment of hesitation, that brief, “Is he hurt, does he need me?” was enough for Damian to swoop in again, getting a firm grip on Tim’s legs. Cradling was a lot harder with two fistfuls of squirmy cat paws in Damian’s hands, but he was making a good faith effort.
Tim writhed and struggled, ignoring Damian’s soothing words and clucks, noticing the tone shifting to annoyance.
It should have been familiar. It was. But it was the annoyed tone Damian used with Dick, or sometimes Bruce. The worried annoyed tone.
Everything about this was just too surreal.
Eventually Damian dropped Tim’s back legs, letting his armored suit protect him from the scrabbling claws as he tried to get a hold of Tim’s head. There was lots of muttered cursing as Tim tried to hiss and spit and wiggle back. Damian’s grip was firm, but carefully so, trying to restrain without crushing.
Victory—defeat—was sudden and unexpected. Damian’s thumb brushed up Tim’s jaw, around his ear, and back.
And Tim. Tim froze.
Or, well. Tim shuddered and went sort of melty. Leaned into the hand just a smidge. Tried to push against Damian’s thumb to get that sensation of tension and pressure and release again, and then realized what he was doing and tried to squirm away.
But Damian had noticed. Damian was trained. Damian was lethal.
He attacked.
Or, well, petted. Soft strokes around Tim’s cat face that didn’t irritate his whiskers too much, that relieved the tension Tim always forgot he was carrying.
“It’s alright,” Damian murmured, cradling Tim closer, moving to stroke down Tim’s head and neck. “You’re safe now, I promise.”
It was so fucking gentle. The discordant impossibility of it all prevented Tim from fully relaxing. But it also felt nice. And Tim…
Well, he didn’t always get nice things. Especially when he screwed up.
Never from Damian.
Shivering a little, Tim buried his face in Damian’s shoulder and tried to think.
This…wasn’t what he had planned. He was supposed to have gotten help, and instead he had gotten Damian, who was perfectly nice now, but might do or say anything once he realized what was going on. Tim was probably pretty safe as long as he stayed a cat. But Damian had witnessed Tim’s complete incompetence as a feline, and once Tim was back to normal, Damian would be more than happy to tell tales and sink Tim in humiliation. He wouldn’t even have to exaggerate. He would just state what he saw, in unvarnished, concise detail and let Tim hang himself.
Alright, new plan. Let Damian pet him for a bit, let Batman come and insist that Tim wasn’t coming home with them, then run back to Tim’s apartment and find a way to email Zatana with paws. Get changed back out of sight and out of mind, no one ever had to know.
It was brilliant. Perfect.
And then Damian stood.
“Father is calling,” he explained, moving purposefully up the steps. “I will have to find a safe place for you until we go home.”
What? What?
It got worse. Damian called the Batmobile. Which was not allowed. It was a tool, Bruce had insisted. Not a kennel. Especially not for wild animals that might panic and make…messes.
But Damian merely shoved Tim inside with a blithe, “Father will understand,” and shut the door before Tim could recover. He still launched himself at the door, but it was closed and unyielding and Tim hurt again.
Why, why would Damian do this? Was he doing it all the time? Bruce had rules.
Okay. Right. Those didn’t mean much.
But still. It was the principle of the thing!
The one advantage Tim had over other trapped animals was that he knew the vehicle he was trapped in. He had the human mind to comprehend it and the experience to know how to manually toggle the locks and, with some patience, how to maneuver the door lever.
The disadvantage Tim had was he was maybe ten pounds of fur and claws, and the Batmobile doors were heavy. It was basically a tank, after all. Designed to be opened, yes, even by someone as small as Robin.
Robin who trained for active combat at least five days a week and was large enough to get good leverage from the leather seats while just sitting.
There was also, Tim considered as he sat there panting, the issue of how to lock the doors once he got out. He really…couldn’t.
Damian knew he had left a cat. A cat that he had left in a locked car, that should not know the inner workings of said vehicle well enough to open it and escape while no one was looking. And especially not lock it behind him.
Behavior like that might get Tim noticed. And he was trying to be sneaky so Damian would never know he had cuddled and pet and saved Tim.
A conundrum.
One Tim hadn’t resolved by the time Batman and Robin returned.
A brief internal debate landed with Tim deciding not to give himself away. He curled into the back seats, eyes flicking between his father and brother, wondering how Damian planned to smuggle Tim into the Cave without getting caught.
Turned out, he didn’t.
Before buckling, Damian leaned around the seat, making sure to find Tim and then making little tsk noises while reaching.
“Robin.” Batman was not happy.
“There are circumstances where all rules must be broken,” Damian said, no apology in his voice. “In order to do good.”
From Bruce’s twitch, he’d probably said that, about their vigilante work, and hadn’t thought through how Damian might use it against him.
Rookie mistake to make after four Robins. But then, Damian sort of made Bruce stupid.
“You don’t need more pets—“
“He’s not for keeping,” Damian said, firm but a bit wistful. “He’s injured.”
Tim snorted, which was mostly a sneeze in his current body. It didn’t sound impressive. Tim wasn’t sure if it made Damian’s point or detracted from it though.
“Injured how?” Bruce asked, and Tim could see from the slump of his shoulders he wasn’t up for a fight. Damian would win this, unless he really screwed it up.
And Damian wasn’t that incompetent.
But Tim still balked when Damian said, “Possible brain damage. He was walking strangely and fell down some stairs. There’s no obvious swelling and his limbs seem to be in place, but…”
The trailing off was ominous, because Damian sounded seriously upset.
Bruce must have noticed too, because he was very soothing as he said, “It could be something else.” Then, carefully, “We don’t have the equipment to diagnose him in the cave.”
No shit and thank goodness. There was a running pool on how many years it would take before Damian had converted a corner of the cave into a working veterinary clinic, but even Steph’s grossly pessimistic assumptions had it at least two years out.
Tim was hoping for five. And first dibs for some experimental lab setups he’d been planning.
“I know. I will take him to the clinic tomorrow if he is still unstable.” Oh fuck no. “He was seven stories up and nearly fell off the stairs. Please, Father?”
And that did it. No special pout, his eyes wouldn’t even be especially wide behind the mask. No hope in his voice either, which was the real key. Damian didn’t ask hoping he could change Bruce’s mind. He asked assuming he would be kicked down.
Nothing like raised-by-assassins trauma to make Bruce Wayne fold like a wet paper sack.
“Clinic tomorrow,” Bruce agreed. “Shelter immediately after. And he stays in the Cave tonight.”
“He’s cold,” Damian complained, which he couldn’t even know because he hadn’t touched Tim since they’d gotten in the car. “What if it makes his condition worse?”
“We have blankets,” Bruce said, and Tim knew, just knew he was getting the Green Lantern themed one. In case it had to be tossed. Because “accidents.”
“What if he needs prolonged treatment?” Damian wheedled.
“Then the vet can keep him until he’s fit for the shelter. And yes, we can cover all the treatment and exam costs.”
If that was a bid to make Bruce seem generous and conciliatory, it hadn’t worked all that well. Damian insisted, “If he has a serious medical history, it will be very difficult for the shelter to find him a home. And he isn’t socialized.”
Which was utter nonsense. Tim had been socialized within an inch of his life by his parents. He knew how to behave properly in more situations than a cat could even dream of.
“Socializing takes time,” Bruce pointed out. “You get attached, D—Robin.”
“I always let them go,” Damian responded, body rigid, tone almost flat. “Always.”
“I know,” Bruce sighed. “You do as I ask. But it hurts you, and it doesn’t need to. You can delegate his care. Other people are qualified and willing.”
It was a stupid argument. Bruce meant to be kind with his logic, but even Tim knew that Damian responded best to emotional reasoning. Against all assertions to the contrary.
And he hated when people implied he was weak. Especially Bruce.
“It does me no harm,” Damian insisted, words almost cutting. “I enjoy the work; it brings me pleasure. I am happy to see those I rescue placed in safe, happy homes.”
And Damian checked. Tim would judge, but humans were the victims of all of his stalking habits, so…
Bruce sighed. “Clinic, then shelter,” he repeated as firmly as he could. “And he stays in the Cave.”
“Yes, Father,” Damian grumbled, burrowing his shoulders into his seat and crossing his arms.
There wasn’t a lot Tim could do. There wasn’t a lot Tim wanted to do. It wasn’t his job to console Damian.
But Tim was technically Damian’s big brother, and Bruce was trying but not quite there, and right now Tim was a cat.
He could help. Right?
Unable to fight Bruce’s arguments, Tim settled for trying to assuage Damian’s fears. If unsocial cats were less likely to be adopted, Tim could be appropriately social.
With a wiggle and a crouch, Tim made a leap for the space between the seats.
He hit, but he’d misjudged, wanting to undershoot and not smack into the front console. Yowling, he slipped and landed on his butt, crunching his tail and ow, that hurt.
More upset noises and Damian was unbuckling his seatbelt, ignoring Bruce’s complaints, and scooping Tim up by his scruff, murmuring soft nothings in three different languages.
Tim curled up in Damian’s lap meekly. This was not how his mission was supposed to go, but he’d made it to his destination and he’d spare all of them the agony of watching him try to maneuver in a moving vehicle again.
The head pats were a nice consolation prize.