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When Tim was little his mother told him to never tell anyone what he was.
"It's not safe, my little one," She had said, sandpaper tongue cleaning the dirt from between the scales of his back, "They will find us, and they will hunt us."
"Even if they are Flock?" He remembers asking, and his mother purred a sound much like a growl and responded, "Trust your judgment," and her eyes were on that of his father's sleeping form.
— — —
To a human, leaving a child alone for months at a time with only a weekly video call would be considered neglect. To a dragon, this is considered smothering.
(To a dragon of Tim's species, at least. Lone hunters as they are, the fact that his mother and his father were nearly inseparable was because his father was of a Flock and his mother was so smitten with him that she had not noticed how her instincts changed until she had a Tim-shaped egg in her nest.)
However, this is not something he can just tell people. Certainly not the neighbors that he highly suspects may be Flock, and even higherly suspects may be the people in costumes that are not quite costumes who roam the rooftops at night.
(Highly suspects is not quite an accurate term, because he knows that they are. Has known since the first Robin had done a quadruple back flip, and since the second one shares the same bright personality as his new neighbor.)
His wings itch and flutter against his back, partially-dragoned as he was. A camera slips from his still-human hands and drops into a bag wrapped around his black-scaled neck.
Smaller than a bear, but still larger than a dog, Tim has had to rely on stealth more and more when he travels to the city. Has had to learn how to slip flawlessly from one form to the other (because one form is not more him than the other, they are both him. They are both Tim. It is just that one Tim has fangs and claws and fire in his throat and the other is small with thumbs and quiet breaths.)
It goes against every instinct, everything that his mother and father have taught him of how to stay hidden and away from humans. To never tell them what he is.
But it is worth it in the end, because he has boxes and boxes filled with pictures that he has taken of his Flock. Until he can get the real thing, until he can find out how to befriend them without it being weird, this is what he has, and he's content with it.
— — —
Tim collapses to the tiled floor of Drake Manor, a screech tearing from his throat as he clutches his chest.
(On the other side of the world, Janet Drake shoves a chair back and returns to the suite she and Jack are staying at as fast as she can without revealing she is a dragon.)
Something is gone. Something is missing.
Something has been torn to shreds and he doesn't know what.
(Janet Drake calls her son the moment the door closes behind her.)
Tim's phone rings, one, two, three.
It goes to voicemail.
The phone rings again.
No one ever calls him unless it's his parents, he probably should-
Pain wracks through his body, starting from his core and expanding outward.
The phone goes to voicemail again.
The phone rings again.
In his haze, Tim manages to click call.
He whines, clothes tearing as scales cover his skin and wings flare from his back.
His mom calls to him from the phone. Chirps and growls that don't translate to human language.
He responds, mostly out of instinct than from actually paying attention.
He whines, something is gone and he doesn't know what and he doesn't know why and his parents are across the world and he just wants his Flock.
(Janet Drake and Jack Drake give up a once-in-a-lifetime deal to visit their son, months before the originally planned time.)
(Two weeks later, Jason Peter Todd-Wayne is declared dead on the news.)
(One month later, Janet and Jack are across the ocean once more.)
(Batman is getting ruthless, almost sloppy, and Tim isn't going to stand around and let another member of his Flock die if he has anything to say about it.)
(He does.)
— — —
Young Justice finds out like this:
Tim is curled up within the Cave, in a way that probably isn't comfortable - if even possible - for a human. But the Bats have a reputation for being not normal humans, so he thinks it's fine.
Plus, no one in the team could really be considered a "normal" human. (Or even a human, for that matter)
So it's fine to curl up like this on the couch, a half-filled report on his lap from his last Gotham patrol. His wings twitch under his skin and his tail itches to curl around his legs, but he'll give them time to stretch later.
Bart lays on the other side of the couch, eyes closed and head resting on a pillow... Wait. Head resting on one of Tim's pillows. Tim blinks, tilts his head, and waits for the territorial instincts to yell at him to steal it back.
They stay silent.
That is - interesting. New. He places the report onto the coffee table and leans forward-
Secret flows down in front of him. More solid than when he had seen her earlier that morning, but less solid than she had been last night when the team were baking in the kitchen together.
Tim leans back, she watches him, squinting. Trying to… assess him? See him? Something? He goes to ask her when-
"You're not what you look like."
A statement, not a question. His eyes dart to Bart, still asleep. "I don't know what you're-"
"You aren't human." Secret pokes him in the forehead.
"I appreciate the compliment, but I'm very much a human." He laughs, pushing her hand away from his face.
She squints at him, then glides back to another room- where Cissie and Cassie are setting up some board game.
(Weeks later, black scaled wings wrap around the team after a bomb goes off before they could get out. Secret grins and Kon groans, slapping a twenty into the palm of her hand.
Tim accepts his fate as the team's heater when winter hits and the unit in the cave breaks down.)
— — —
Tim wants to be with his Flock.
Not that he isn't, already. But Young Justice is only half of his Flock, and he only sees the other half at night and it's — It isn't enough.
He tries to be close to them as much as he can, sticking close to Batman or being side-by-side with Nightwing whenever the other vigilante hops over to Gotham — but it's not enough.
His parents want to go back to the wild. Playing human has been fun, but they've assembled a good sized hoard over the years and want to spread their wings whenever they wish, rather than just when they can get away from prying eyes.
So they'll die.
They won't really die, but Janet Drake and Jack Drake will be dead, and Tim Drake will be the last living with the Drake name.
They'll still talk, still have their weekly phone calls and twice a year in-person meetings. But for all intents and purposes, Janet and Jack Drake will be dead, and Timothy Drake will be an orphan.
If all goes well, Timothy Drake will be Timothy Drake-Wayne.
A month later, when his parents are leaving and overseas, their plane goes down.
No one can find it, no one can figure out why. They're just… gone. Missing. Dead.
Tim keeps to himself for a few weeks after, plays up the role of a kid in mourning to the press and to his Flock.
(He plans the weekly phone calls with his parents around the times he'll be with Young Justice and makes them on a phone no one else knows he has.)
The day his name becomes Tim Drake-Wayne, he tells his parents. They visit him as soon as they can to take him out hunting with them in celebration.
(There's a corner of the Batcave hidden under tables and scrap that he's been hollowing out. He fills it with printed photos, various puzzles, cameras and their lenses.
The start of a hoard.)
— — —
Dragons shed. A lot.
Especially young dragons like Tim, constantly growing like he does.
Usually Tim will throw his scales away. He'll crush them up and sprinkle them in the garden, or he'll toss them into the bay because once something goes in there, it won't be found.
He's also given them as gifts before, though only recently. Cissie, Cassie, and Kon all have an earring made of one of his smaller scales. Bart has a bracelet that he fidgets with constantly and Secret has a necklace.
But they already know he's a dragon. The Bats do not. He can't just give them jewelry made of his scales or even just give them one of his scales with no explanation.
Tim knocks on the door to Damian's art room and takes a step back when the kid yells for him to wait.
Pitch black dragon scales sit cupped in his hands, shed only a few days ago. He thinks they might be from his side, tough and rough around the edges as they are.
Damian opens the door and leans out, squinting when he sees Tim, "Drake."
Damian has only been with them for a few months and Tim… doesn't know what to think of him.
Tim wants to get along with Damian, but Damian is prickly, he refuses any attempts Tim has made to hang out with him.
Tim likes Damian, a new addition to the Bats and in turn a new addition to his Flock.
So Tim isn't going to stop trying to make Damian like him, even if it takes years.
He was patient with the first half of his Flock, he can be patient when it comes to the second half.
He holds his hands out, palms cupped together and facing upwards, to the kid, "I know you like painting, and I… found these a while back. Maybe you can make paint with them, or something?"
Damian takes the scales from him, holding one of them up to the light above them, "Where did you get genuine dragon scales?"
"Y'know, around." Tim shrugs, gestures to the area around them, "These are shed scales, not skinned ones."
Damian looks away from the scales, opening his mouth to ask something, only for Tim to have already snuck off.
(Tim doesn't know if that helped anything, but Damian seems to be standing closer to him more often than not now. Occasionally the kid will ask where Tim got the dragon scales, only to be met with an empty space where Tim once was. He stops asking after about attempt six.)
— — —
There's a new player on the field, someone who goes by the Red Hood.
It's not the Joker taking up his old name, not that he could do so from the cell in Arkham that he'll be in for the next few months (teeth marks in his stomach and left bleeding out, everyone assumes he wandered too close to the dragon den in the swamp.)
(Tim would recognize the scent of his mother and father anywhere, even buried under the blood of the clown.)
This new person acts different from the Joker. They're silent and smart, having taken over Crime Alley single handedly with Batman not knowing until it was all theirs.
Bruce has told Tim to stay as far away from the Red Hood as possible.
Of course, this means that the very next night Tim makes a beeline straight for Crime Alley.
He does it for two reasons. The first is that Bruce has been… overprotective? Constantly checking in on Tim during patrols, keeping an eye on him all the time which makes retreating to his nest very difficult.
The second is that something is telling him to. His scales itch and his fangs hurt.
When he watched the camera footage that the Bats have of the Red Hood something in him recognized the crime lord. The way that he moved felt so familiar, but Tim doesn't know why.
He just knows that he has to find who this person is, if for no other reason than to sate his curiosity.
Tim watches, hidden in the shadows of a nook. He recognizes how the Red Hood moves, but he can't name why. The air smells familiar in a way that makes him want to cuddle and purr at the person he's seen kill people with no hesitation.
He opens his mouth and tilts his head, it smells like…
Skin turns to scales and wings burst from his back before Tim can think. He sticks to the shadows, still, but follows the Red Hood with nothing much else on his mind.
His mind always works differently when he's dragon shaped than when he's human shaped, one of those things being that he always finds it difficult to tell how long it's been.
Tim has been following the Red Hood for either five minutes or five hours, but he can't bring himself to care which of those it's been when the crime lord finally ends his patrol and closes the door behind him.
Tim paces, black scales hidden in shadows and toying with the red feathers around his neck. He has to wait because it'll be rude if he doesn't. He has to wait because-
Glass shatters around his scales, a body falls to the floor with an oomph, and Tim sits on the chest of, and face-to-face with, the missing member of his Flock, his tail wagging behind him.
— — —
Tim doesn't know when he was hit.
He shouldn't have been, the gas mask was secure on his face and his armor covers all of him.
But somehow, he had gotten hit with fear gas.
Normally- well, normally he doesn't get hit, but when he does he knows when it happens and immediately takes the antidote (if there is one for that strain) or runs to Drake Manor as fast as he can.
See, if a Bat gets hit with fear gas, they take the antidote or run to the Batcave and lock themselves in a quarantine room until the effects wear off.
Tim will go full dragon because it's the form he can best defend himself in.
(Instinctively, at least. He's never fought anyone as a dragon so he isn't actually sure if it would be more effective than his human form.)
Fear floods his mind and he wants to run back to the Cave, he needs to run back to the Manor.
Where its comfortable and he can hide.
Fabric tears as spikes rip from his back and through the Red Robin costume.
He bites back a scream, forced transformations are painful and destructive - no magic to hide the clothes inside of the new body.
Someone says his name, Tim thinks it may have been Dick but he can't tell over the roaring in his ears.
His tail slams against the floor of the warehouse, he opens his eyes just in time to see Dick flinch back and the rest of the Bats standing around an unconscious Scarecrow staring at him.
Most of them in shock, though worry is plain on Steph's face - the first human he had told and she had sworn to keep his secret forever.
In seconds the transformation is over, scraps of the Red Robin costume sit below him and Tim-
Bruce reaches out to him and Tim runs.
He darts across the warehouse, flaps his wings, and jumps through a hole in the ceiling. Wood and metal tear at his scales but he's out.
He's terrified- wants to go home - but some part of him tells him to stay above the clouds, blend into the trees outside of Gotham and crawl back to the manor.
Tim crawls into what used to be his parents bedroom, what is now a mostly-empty nest, and curls up, alone.
Tim awakens to the door of the master bedroom opening, Steph stands there sheepishly, Dick, Damian, and Bruce behind her.
He snorts at her, smoke pillowing from his nostrils. She glares at him, "I'm not going to be the one to explain all of this."