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Red Hood finds Red Robin in the sub-basement.
Hm. A bit misleading. That makes it sound like it was easy to find him. Not only is the compound in the remote no-man’s-land deserts of Iraq, the Replacement was actually on the fifth-level underground floor, and the room he’s in is only accessible by smashing the drywall and making a hole to climb through. Because the room had no door, of course. Typical fucking Ra’s.
And isn’t it a sight to see.
Despite the room obviously valiantly attempting to be sterile, there’s red streaks of blood everywhere. The scene is brutal. The first thing Jason notices is the doctors, white lab coats stained a vicious crimson, so he promptly shoots them each in the head. Heh. They’re not going anywhere anytime soon.
One of them is holding what looks like a gag, still covered in spit and blood, and Jason’s vision flashes green.
Jason takes a second to radio in that he located Red Robin, rattling off the directions to the secret room. How did the doctors get in, anyway? There has to be a trap door or something, no way the doctors were trapped in here with Tim.
After that, it’s easy to approach Tim. Jason does a double-take. The wings glare back at him, as starkly white as fresh snow. Well, except for the horrifying red stains on the rumpled feathers. Jason forces himself to look past the appendages that are somehow growing out of Tim’s back–
Jason valiantly ignores the inflamed, bloody area and raises his gaze to Tim’s face. Red Robin’s eyes are slitted and glazed, and fuck, he must be dissociating or some shit. If there’s one thing Red Hood knows how to do, it’s save a kid. And right now, Red Robin really looks like a kid. He’s trapped on the surgery table, but positioned so that his back is baring his wings to the room. Every shaking, too-thin limb is strapped to the table, with medical restraints around his arms, legs, chest, and neck. His fingernails are jagged and frayed– like he’s been raking them against something.
Green creeps into Jason’s vision, but he shakes his head viciously to get rid of it. Now is not the time. Jason slowly approaches Tim, and clarity sparks in the kid’s eyes. Jason’s shoulders relax just a little bit. Tim must recognize him.
Jason takes out a knife, intent on slicing away the restraints. The eye-straining fluorescent light catches on the razor-sharp blade. The light flickers into Tim’s clearing eyes, and he starts thrashing.
The problem with this being, of course, the medical restraints still around every limb, even trapping his wings (shit, Jason’s not gonna get used to that) against his body. Tim jerks around violently, but his mouth is firmly closed. Still, there are some frankly primal noises coming from deep in his throat, and Jesus, can Dickwing get here already?!
As if summoned by that thought, Nightwing skids to a stop in the hallway outside the hole in the wall Jason made. Dick jumps through, takes one look at the scene in front of him, and has to take a deep breath to control his rage. Jason is suddenly certain that Ra’s is going to die tonight. It’s only a question of whether it’s Dick or Jason who kills him.
Nightwing gracefully takes over, not even commenting on Jason’s blatant violation of the no-kill rule, getting right up close to Tim and attempting to soothe him. Jason goes to scan the room, partly to gather data and partly to ignore the fact that the soothing doesn’t seem to be working.
Jason’s eyes alight on a heavily padlocked door with a closed viewing slot. He stomps towards it, and Tim suddenly goes limp, all the fight draining out of him. Eerily, Jason doesn’t think it was Dick’s platitudes that he’s safe now that did it. He hears Dick mutter something about holy wings, Batman, and has to take a deep breath of his own.
Jason flicks out his lock picking set and gets to work on the several padlocks on the door, his expert hand making quick work of them. A jagged gasp gets his attention back to the open hole serving as the entrance.
“Rob!”
Spoiler clambers into the room, looking for all the world like she wants to surge forward, but stops herself at the last moment. Don’t approach the half-feral highly-trained vigilante when he’s dissociating out of reality. Good idea, Spoiler. Maybe Hood should’ve thought of that.
Jason jerks his head back to the last lock, trying to dismiss his thoughts.
“Red, I need you to breathe for me, bud.” Dick’s calm yet strained voice breaks the tense silence. There’s a funny, spiky thing in Jason’s chest at the words.
Nightwing is taking deep breaths in and out, and Hood guesses they’re for Spoiler’s benefit as much as Red Robin’s.
Jason glances back at the surgery table, debating how Tim would react if he picked the locks on the restraints. Maybe that would go over better than the knife. Decision made, he slowly and quietly approaches. He gently takes hold of the bind on Tim’s left hand, and deftly picks the lock.
Jason doesn’t like how Tim has gone limp, how his lidded eyes are staring unseeing at a point in the middle distance. How he’s just sort of… accepting whatever’s happening to him.
Well, at least it’s making Jason’s job easier. He works his way up to the neck clamp (he refuses to even think the word collar), reaching in before he can hesitate. He makes quick work of the lock, and the clamp clicks open. It takes Tim a second to realize, but when he registers that he’s free, he’s up. Literally, his newly freed wings flap and he ascends. Shit, so those aren’t just for show.
Everyone carefully backs away, not willing to engage with a half-delirious fully-traumatized Tim. Both for Tim’s sake and their’s, as Tim can get ruthless when he’s cornered (once, when Red Hood and Red Robin were backed into a wall, Red ripped a man’s jugular out with his teeth. Neither of them told Batman. Jason tries not to think about it.).
Tim has since landed back on the floor, with the small, cramped room not lending itself well to flight.
“Red, will you come with us? We’re here to rescue you.”
Tim’s eyes clear a bit.
“Nightwing?” He asks slowly, as if he’s unable to comprehend the sight in front of him. His voice is rough from disuse. Or maybe from screaming. His gaze shifts, and Jason can’t see his face from this angle, but Tim’s voice is quietly gutted. “Spoiler?”
“Yeah, Rob, it’s me.” Spoiler says, setting her jaw against the tears rising up. Hood has to admit she does an admirable job at choking back her emotions.
Tim, looking more lucid than he has since Hood found him, folds his wings against his back and peeks around the room. He startles a little when he sees Red Hood, but then seems to remember who got him out of the restraints, and relaxes again.
He’s almost… too relaxed. Maybe he’s going into shock.
Nightwing seems to have the same thought, and ushers Tim toward the hole in the wall. Despite the promise of freedom, Tim digs his heels in when Dick tries to steer him forward.
He slips away from Spoiler’s reaching hand, and looks increasingly cornered.
“Is this real?” He asks quietly, voice cracking on the last word. “Is this another hallucination?”
Wait– another? Hood tries not to think about the implications of that, but Tim is still talking, voice strained but determined. “Prove it’s you.”
Nightwing speaks without hesitation. “After Robin died, you came to my apartment in Bludhaven to convince me to be Robin again.” Dick’s lips form an unamused smile. “I slammed the door in your face because I couldn’t handle the thought of stepping back into Batman’s shadow.”
Tim smiles faintly. “Yeah… That sounds about right.” His shoulders slump, and with them, the wings droop as well. Hood tries not to stare. As Tim follows Nightwing out the hole, looking for all the world like he’s walking to the corner store to get a drink, Jason turns back to the final lock on the mysterious door.
Smartly, Hood waits until Red Robin, Spoiler, and Nightwing are gone down the hall before unlocking the door.
The inside of the room paints a grotesque picture. Heavy chains are wrought into the wall, and within their radius is a small, uncomfortable-looking cot with a sparse pillow. A hole in the floor serves as a toilet, and the whole room reeks of bodily fluids, desperation, and terror.
Jason does some quick math– the room isn’t even wide enough for Tim to stretch his wings. Green rage flashes into his psyche as he absorbs the fact that Tim’s wings– which he can obviously control to an instinctual degree– have probably never fully opened.
He has to get out of here. Quickly, because the red-stained feathers on the floor threaten to make the green fully overtake his vision.
Tim has been missing for a little more than three months. This has been where he sleeps, eats, and undergoes fucking medical torture at the hands of Ra’s al Ghul.
It’s been a long time since a scene has made Jason nauseous– you kind of need a strong stomach for this line of work– but this just makes him want to vomit.
He clambers out of the hole, intent on going to sweep the rest of the sub-basements for more hidden rooms.
–
Tim looks up from where he’s sat on the cot. The door is opening for the first time in what must be days since his surprise splenectomy (Tim doesn’t really know, on account of the no windows situation).
“Hey, what–”
People in white lab coats– doctors, or scientists, Tim realizes with a thrill of horror– are approaching. Multiple of them are holding syringes full of dull liquid.
“No! Don’t– What’s in that syringe!?”
The chain on his ankle is yanked. Hands grab his legs, arms, and throat. He chokes in terror, thrashing against his captors in vain. Tim latches his teeth onto someone’s arm and yanks, ripping a good chunk off and spitting wildly.
He’s really starting to get dizzy from the lack of food and water. The stitches on his stomach ache and split. Through desperate, humiliating tears he sees them raise the syringes.
“Wait, wait– don’t do this, please–”
Strangely, they don’t go for his neck or his arm, no. They go for his back. For his spine.
“No– fuck, fuck, fucking OW! What the hell–?!”
The pain is so sudden and lancing that he blacks out.
–
Tim follows Nightwing in a daze. He knows he needs to snap out of it, because the look Steph is shooting him is way too concerned. It’s just– there’s no way he can be Red Robin right now. Shit, he’s not even sure if he can be Tim anymore. His face is completely settled into a numb, unfeeling mask. It’s comforting, in a way.
The wings sway on his back, swishing against the floor and mocking him with every step.
Look! They scream, look at how far you’ve fallen! Look at what you let me do to you. Look at how fucked up you are–
Thankfully, they reach the elevator shaft before Tim’s thoughts can crescendo. The shaft is industrially sized. The wings twitch on Tim’s back in anticipation.
“We could grapple you up, or you could use my spare– Tim!”
Tim ignores Dick, and bodily throws himself into the gaping black maw that is the elevator shaft. The wings snap open behind him, he’s falling and catching an updraft for a sickeningly glorious second before he beats them once, twice– and he’s rising. He’s never done this before, but it’s as easy as running.
His back strains. They barely fed him, and Tim rarely ate even when they did. His ascent is due to sheer will and spite. He has to get out of here. He grits his teeth and flaps harder.
Finally, he reaches a floor where he can see a patch of sky through a window, and snaps the wings closed so he rockets out the door. He stumbles on the landing, wings instinctively flaring out to steady him. Fuck, his back really hurts. Something warm trickles down his spine, and he’s not sure if it’s blood or nerve damage.
“...Red Robin?!”
Relief floods his body at the voice, and it’s such a heady sensation that he almost sags to the ground. He can feel the wings drooping as if in response to this feeling.
“B! So the League got my transmission, thank God–” Tim says, watching Batman approach with glazed eyes. Bruce stops in front of him, hands coming up to land on Tim’s shaking arms. Shit, since when was he shaking?
“Red,” Bruce interrupts his babbling, “what happened?”
He looks so heartbroken (his face has an expression– he looks sad– who is this and what has he done with Batman–), that Tim forgets to answer for a second.
“I’m wondering that myself, actually.” Jason’s voice rings out, distorted as it is by the mask, and Tim would wince if his face could express emotion right now. He really wishes they didn’t have to go into it. But, alas, the mission must have a report. So decrees the god of paperwork (Batman. Batman is the god of paperwork.).
“Can we at least… get out of here before mission report?” Tim asks weakly, and Bruce’s face crumples.
“Sure, chum.” His voice is strained. Tim’s heart sinks. Shit, did he really fuck up so bad that Bruce would be mad at him?
He can feel his body’s trembling increase tenfold. He takes a wobbly step towards the hallway, and startles when Bruce and Jason converge on him to support his weight.
Tim swallows his pride and leans on them, feeling sick whenever the wings brush their suits.
–
Tim wakes up on the surgery table, gasping for air like the day he was born. He promptly chokes on whatever the fuck they shoved down his throat, and his panic increases tenfold when he catches sight of a sharp scalpel glinting in the light.
Whatever tube is down his throat is removed. He heaves a desperate breath, hacking and coughing. He starts flailing desperately. A gag is promptly shoved between his teeth and strapped behind his head, but other than that, the surgeons pay no mind to his thrashing and shouting.
The scalpel returns on its path towards his back, which, now that he thinks about it, is searing. Like, steak sizzling on the pan searing. Like burning flesh searing.
Momentarily distracted as he is by the blinding pain in his spine, the surgeon takes his lapse in struggling to make an incision, two quick cuts on the plane of his back.
The burning reaches a height he didn’t know it could, and then something is bursting out of his spine.
His animal shriek is muffled through the gag.
–
The Batcave is blessedly the same. It’s Tim who’s completely different.
He wants to get rid of the scrubs immediately, ignoring everyone’s questions and beelining for the showers. Dick steps forward, but Jason stops him with a hand on his shoulder. They let him run, coward that he is.
The wings bump into the walls of the shower stall, and Tim snarls wordlessly before numb acceptance overtakes him once more. He maneuvers around the wings to scrub every bit of dried blood from his body. The weekly ice-cold hose offs from the scientists were hardly sufficient in effectively cleaning anything but that day’s blood. Everything else congealed into a disgusting crust. Tim takes great pleasure in scrubbing viciously until his skin is pink.
He steps out of the shower as raw and exposed as a nerve.
Tim dresses mechanically. He has to rip the back off a random workout shirt to fit the wings through. He doesn’t think about it. At the very least, brushing his teeth is another type of joy.
His eyes catch on a mirror in the bathroom. The wings dwarf his malnourished figure and he looks, for lack of a better word, haunted. The bags under his eyes are legendary, even for him. His hair is long and curling at the ends, even wet as it is. The jet-blackness of his hair is a stark contrast to his sickly pallour.
He’d kill for some coffee right about now.
Mind made up, he gives one last glance to the unfamiliar boy in the mirror before he slips out of the communal showers. Before he rounds the corner to the rest of the Bats and Birds, he snaps the wings open. With one powerful, silent flap, he’s up. He wisps through the rafters of the Batcave. Only Cass notices his escape, but she knows him well enough not to mention anything to the others.
He’s halfway through making a shot (or five) of espresso when someone finally enters the kitchen. The wings fold tighter to his body, and a shiver of revulsion shakes Tim to his core.
“Tim?” Jason’s voice is so unlike what Tim’s used to. When they met (officially, not the first time Tim saw Robin), after Jason slit Tim’s throat, his voice was so full of righteous hate that it had sounded like nails on a chalkboard. Grating and gut-wrenching.
Now, his voice is as soft as smoke, and just as ephemeral. Tim can’t place his intentions. Frustrating, as his people skills are normally sharp as a blade. Tim’s time in captivity has dulled his skills. It’s infuriating.
He realizes he hasn’t answered Jason. Well, he isn’t calling him replacement or pretender, so he must not want to kill him.
Tim realizes what this is about. He winces, and the wings bristle on his back.
“I forgot about mission report. Sorry.” Tim almost grimaces again at how rough his voice is. He hasn’t spoken to anyone besides the scientists in what must be months. And then he was almost always screaming at them, so. It’s been a while since Tim’s had a civilized conversation.
Jason’s resulting silence has the wings rustling restlessly on his back. Tim would turn and tug at them, but they don’t like when he does that. Plus, it hurts like a bitch. Tim abruptly shakes his head– he’s not there anymore. But he still shouldn’t try to pull the wings off. It tends to exacerbate the nerve damage.
Jason still hasn’t said anything. There’s an odd look on his face that Tim has never seen before. He doesn’t like it.
Tim decides to shoulder past Jason with his mug of quintuple espresso shots clutched in his hand like a lifeline.
Tim descends into the Batcave to find everyone mostly dispersed. Batman sits alone at the Batcomputer, and Tim immediately recognizes the blueprints he has pulled up as the underground facility Tim was being kept at. His suddenly trembling hands curl into fists.
“B.” Tim greets, and Batman turns to him. With the cowl on he’s the same unforgiving dark knight he’s always been. Then he reaches up and tugs it off. The wings twitch. Tim curses his newfound uncontrollable tell. Bruce will hate it. Tim’s heart sinks horribly at the report he’s going to have to give.
There’s a quiet, unsettled glint in Bruce’s eye that Tim hates, so he starts to give his mission report.
He starts with the original mission gone awry, with Pru and the whole missing spleen debacle. But that was just the beginning. Once Ra’s had gotten a sample of his blood, he’d realized Tim was viable for his scientists’ newest experiment.
“...he said that Robin would fly. I didn’t have the heart to tell him that I’m not Robin anymore.”
Tim shakes his head, and can’t quite meet Bruce’s eyes. He doesn’t want to see whatever stonewall of an expression he’s making.
The wings nestle closer into his body, in some twisted, fucked up form of comfort. Horribly, it works. Tim’s erratic heart, all jumpy and adrenaline-filled from recalling this whole shitshow, goes calm-ish.
He takes a deep breath, and continues where he left off.
“So they– injected my back with an unknown substance.” Tim shivers. “After… two incisions, the wings– appeared.” Tim explains stiltedly.
Tim doesn’t know when the tremble in his hands spread to his arms, but they’re shaking bad. He crosses them to disguise how desperately he clutches to himself.
“Tim…” Batman starts, and Tim chances a look up. Bruce looks… not much better than Tim himself. His stint lost in the timestream has left him weak, and Tim realizes with a start that his own disappearance is the cause of the harried look in his eyes.
“Yeah?” He asks, wondering if he wants a more accurate description of when Tim… acquired the wings. He hopes it’s not that. He can’t bring himself to remember it with that much clarity. The fuzzy edges help.
“Are you alright?”
“Fine.” Tim says sharply. “Why wouldn’t I be?”
Bruce practically flounders. “...You’ve been through an immensely traumatic–”
“Oh, save it.” Tim rolls his eyes. The wings shift with the movement and his cavalier attitude darkens.
“He’s right, Master Tim.” Alfred is descending the stairs with a tray full of tea and sandwiches, and Tim could cry. For the sandwiches, of course. Nothing else.
Tim avoids answering by shoving a sandwich into his mouth, trying not to gag on his first real meal in… he doesn’t know how long.
Bruce and Alfred let him dodge their questions, and the tea burns his tongue but he doesn’t care.
He’s home.
–
“Please, no–!”
Tim writhes on the operating table, limbs bruising against the restraints. He’s lost count of how many times the scientists have injected him with supplements for the initial wing serum, but every time it burns.
His back is irritated and achy on a good day, and excruciatingly painful every other day. Today, however, puts all the other days to shame.
The pain rises to an awful, nauseating crescendo. Tim yells hoarsely as he hacks up vomit around his gag. They stopped trying to put him under the fifth time he woke up screaming. Now they just gag him and make sure the restraints are extra tight.
Finally, blessedly, the pain abates. The scientists back away, done for the day. Tim finally goes limp when he hears the padlocks on the door to his room unlock.
They pull him into the small room and clamp his ankle cuff on before he can muster the energy to do anything. Tim’s knees wobble and the wings flap uselessly before he crumples to the ground. The scientists don’t bother to help him to the small cot.
He hasn’t seen Ra’s since the man stole his blood and promised him the sky. He’s given up hope that the Justice League will believe him. No one is coming.
He sleeps on the floor that night.
When he wakes, it’s to a nightmare given flesh. Nightwing stands just out of reach, bathed in shadows.
“Look at you.” Dick’s voice is chilling, as damning as when he’d threatened Tim with Arkham. “How could you let them do this to you?”
Tim glances at the cameras in every corner of the room. “Nightwing! How are you–”
“Shut up.” Tim’s mouth clicks shut, and the wings draw up around him. “You’re pathetic.”
His whited-out eyes drag up and down Tim’s form condemningly, lingering on the wings. His next words are like a death knell.
“You never deserved Robin.”
As if summoned by this statement, a nightmarish Red Hood silently emerges from the shadows still surrounding Nightwing.
“I wish you’d bled to death when I slit your throat, pretender.” He says viciously, and Tim can’t see his face but he can imagine the deadly glare on it.
The wings come up to wrap around his body fully, trying to protect him from the probably-not-real figures of his brothers. They do nothing to block the jeers and taunts that keep Tim up late into the night.
He’s almost glad when the scientists slam open the door to his cell, syringes in hand. Almost.
Nightwing and Red Hood stick around long enough to watch the daily routine (gag, needles, pain, pain, pain), but do nothing.
They always do nothing.
–
Tim can’t sleep. It’s been months since he’s been clean, fed, and able to access a comfortable bed. It’s all he wanted during the long nights in his cell.
Now he has it, and he doesn’t know what to do.
Every shadow looks like nightmare-Nightwing (Nightmare-wing? Heh.) or nightmare-Red Hood. Every creak is the door opening to reveal doctors and syringes and gags.
And his wings ache. It’s a bone-deep kind of thing, hurting from the tips of his feathers all the way down. He can see just by looking at them that the cursory scrub in the shower was not enough to clean them. Down feathers are breaking and molting at the base of the wings, and he suspects that his back is smattered in feathers. His primaries are completely fucked, don’t even get him started, and the feathers at every joint are ruffled and painfully out of alignment. The sheets are absolutely covered in feathers and down powder, and he’s too embarrassed to ask Alfred to get him new ones.
Hence, sleep is impossible.
Tim heaves himself out of bed, thinking that if he can’t sleep, he might as well have more coffee. The quintuple shot had gone down easy, and it really reminded Tim of what he was missing during his… time away. Man, those caffeine-withdrawal headaches were a bitch.
He goes to wrap a blanket around his shoulders, and when the wings get in the way he almost breaks down sobbing. He swallows once, twice, and forces the frustrated tears away.
He settles for wrapping the wings around himself (a cheap replacement, if you ask Tim) and traverses the hallway to the small kitchen in the family wing.
Tim’s in the middle of rummaging through the cupboards (did they seriously move the coffee?), when he hears someone come into the kitchen.
Tim knows who it is without looking back.
“I’m getting deja vu.” Tim says. “How many times are you gonna accost me in the kitchen?”
Jason sighs. “M’not trying to accost you, birdy,” Tim’s wings bristle despite himself. “I just couldn’t help but notice that despite returning from being kidnapped for three months, you’re deciding to get more coffee instead of, y’know, going the fuck to sleep?”
Tim takes a moment to curse Jason’s perceptiveness. It’s what makes him such a competent crime lord. It also makes him a pain in the ass of a big brother.
“Well, you can just fuck right off.” Tim tells him politely. “I’ve been deprived of coffee for months, I’m just making up for lost time.”
Jason is silent for a moment. “Can’t sleep, huh?” He sounds disgustingly sympathetic. Tim’s edges sharpen for a second. It would be so easy to scream at Jason to get out, to claw at him, to let the edges pierce Jason’s tender flesh.
Tim forces himself to take a breath.
“Can’t sleep.” He agrees.
Jason’s momentary silences are getting annoying. It means he’s making irritatingly astute connections.
“I think I know what can help.” Jason looks shrewd.
“What?” Tim is suddenly apprehensive.
“Well… no offense, but your wings look all– messed up.” The wings ruffle, and as if on cue, several bone-white feathers shake loose and drift onto the floor. Tim refuses to look at them. Jason continues, oblivious. “It looks uncomfortable.”
Tim lets out a mirthless laugh. It sounds manic, even to his own ears. Jason doesn’t wince, and Tim is silently impressed.
“How are you going to help with that?” Tim scoffs, aiming to hurt.
Jason just stares at him levelly. Damn, he’s really doing good these days. Too bad Tim can’t suppress the urge to poke out the anger from the Lazarus Pit-affected man.
Okay, maybe Tim is doing worse than he thought. He sighs, and the wings droop with him. He takes his mug of who-knows-how-many shots of espresso and leads Jason to his room.
Jason’s eyes widen at the mess the wings have made out of the blankets, and Tim reddens.
“Shut up.” Tim mutters. Jason throws his hands up.
“I didn’t even say anything!”
Tim just sits on the bed, among the nest of blankets, and bares the wings.
–
It’s after session twenty that Ra’s deigns to see him.
The door opens abruptly. Tim scrambles up from the cot, almost tripping on the ankle cuff. Tim grits his teeth when he sees who it is.
“Detective!” Ra’s crows. “I see you’ve acclimated to the serum well.”
“Fuck yourself.” Tim grits out.
“Aww, that’s no way to speak to your new owner.” A thrill of horror runs through Tim’s chest. He’s never getting out of here, is he? “Now, let me see my prize.”
Tim almost forgets what he’s talking about, staring blankly until Ra’s gestures impatiently. In a daze, Tim turns and mantles the wings as best as he can in the cramped room. It’s cruel, really, how small it is. Tim likes to think they didn’t know how monstrously big the wings would be. It’s better than the alternative.
Ra’s chuckles, and runs a finger along the messy, bloody feathers. Tim’s whole body shudders in revulsion. The wings shake with it, and a flurry of feathers cascades down. A sharp tug on the secondary feathers makes Tim yelp and jerk away, but Ra’s tugs him back viciously.
Tim flails, unused to the painful sensation in his new appendage. He swings around, using Ra’s’ close proximity against him as he aims for his eyes. His thumbs drive down hard, right on the mark, and a sickening squelch can be heard as Ra’s gasps.
Tim’s smile is a joyless thing. But Ra’s just calmly detaches Tim’s hands from his face, and with a sinking stomach Tim remembers that the Pit can cure any injury. Blood streams down the man’s still-smiling face.
“You will regret that, Detective.”
–
Tim flinches involuntarily at the first touch to his wings. He burns with shame, but Jason doesn’t pay his inner turmoil any mind. He just starts combing his fingers through his primaries, realigning feathers and sifting out the dirt and down.
Tim fights against his instinct to melt into Jason’s hands. They’re warm against the deep ache in the wing, and Tim wants to scream at how right it feels. It feels so right that it’s wrong. It’s wrong because these wings aren’t really his, they don’t really belong on his back, so therefore he shouldn’t find the hands in his wings satisfying or comforting.
Tim is about to tell Jason to stop when he hears a scuff at the door. He whips around so fast he hears something in his neck crick, and finds Dick staring in astonishment.
“They’re beautiful.” Dick says, and Tim has to rip his eyes away from Dick’s expression of utter fondness. Tim swallows thickly.
“Right. Beautiful.” Jason’s eyes narrow at Tim’s barely-hidden bitterness.
“Let me help!” Dick offers cheerfully, not waiting for a response as he walks towards the bed. Tim’s wings bristle at the sudden advancement, too reminiscent of how the doctors would come at him with the syringes.
Jason, with a hand still in Tim’s wing, obviously notices.
“Woah, back up there, Dickface.”
Dick stops abruptly, pouting. But he softens when he notices that Tim is absolutely rigid with tension. His wings are faintly shaking and Tim himself is not faring any better, his hands clenched into fists again to hide the tremble.
“Sorry, I meant can I please help with your wings?”
Tim pauses. It would go faster with two people. He agrees, nodding slowly.
Dick approaches slower this time, and Tim tries to relax. He barely even startles when Dick touches the wing, the one that Jason’s not touching. Now he’s got two people touching his wings.
The only touches he got under Ra’s captivity were cruel or clinical. Never has he had someone touch his wings with care, let alone two people.
But as his older brothers resume combing through the outer layers of his feathers, he can’t help but shudder into their touch. His wings go limp, exhausted from holding position for so long. Tim slumps into the bed, leaving each wing laying in the laps of Dick and Jason.
Their hands gently work up the wings, aligning feathers into their rightful places, sending hot sparks up his back and warming him to his core. His trembling increases, and he realizes he’s shaking with sobs.
It’s like a dam has broken in his mind, and everything he’s been shoving down is flooding out.
Dick and Jason don’t pause in their grooming, they just neatly finish the tertials and Dick starts petting his scapula, and it feels so right that he sighs, tears tapering off. He nestles his wings into their touch, and his wings curl over them like an avenging angel.
Through the haze of incoming sleep, he hears Jason chuckle.
–
Tim is not a regretful person by nature. He makes carefully calculated decisions based on his own interests. He very rarely wishes he had done something differently.
Tim comes to sorely regret gouging Ra’s eyeballs out.
Not because of the sheer fact that he did it, no. But because where the surgeons before had been unfeelingly cold, they are now unflinchingly cruel.
He doesn’t like to think about the last bit of his captivity. All he really remembers is the cold, desperate ache in his chest when he kept having the realization, day after excruciating day, that no one is coming.
That, and the pain. Always the pain.
–
Tim… attempts to get better. Weeks of Alfred’s carefully curated diet has put some strength back into his body, some muscle on his arms, and actual flesh in the hollows of his cheeks. There’s a downside, because of course there is. It’s somehow made the wings even fucking bigger.
Great. Like Tim needed them to take up more space or use up more of his energy.
What’s even better is that Tim just can’t seem to get over his time away. Every unexpected touch to his wings or back sends him into such a panic that Damian thought he was having a heart attack the first time it happened. It’s just– he remembers every second of it. Every reflex he’s honed in the last few months has been programmed to get away at the first brush against the wings.
It’s on what’s becoming a typical day for him that Jason interrupts the monotony of recovery.
Jason ushers him down into the Batcave. Tim knows Bruce is occupied with his once in a blue moon board meeting that he suspects Dick orchestrated (Tim hasn’t been allowed to take the CEO post back, much to his frustration. He’s been avoiding Bruce out of revenge.). Jason leads him straight to the Batmobile, and Tim has to fold his wings in tight just to fit in the passenger seat.
They coast through the city, Jason keeping up a steady stream of faux-casual updates on the Crime Alley scene, complete with gripes about goons, complaints about clients, and gushing about the working girl who lets Jason coo over her newborn.
Tim lets the sound wash over him. Tim has the discomforting thought of how just a few months ago this would’ve been simply another Tuesday. It’s unsettling how quickly the familiar can become foreign. Tim’s face remains blank as he nods along, his head splitting due to the dissonance.
They reach their destination after half an hour of driving. It’s on the outskirts of Gotham county, in the countryside of New Jersey at a rare hill in the flatlands. Tim has a sinking suspicion of why they’re here.
Proving Tim right, Jason turns to him with a glint in his eyes.
“Okay. Go.”
Tim stares. “Go?”
“I know you know why I brought you here.” Jason sighs, looking comically put-upon. “For some reason, you refuse to exercise your wings, and–”
“For some reason–?” Tim jerks, staring at Jason. “You think I want these things? I don’t wanna even think about them.”
“Tim.” How is Jason possibly calm right now? “They’re a part of you now. If you don’t exercise them, they’ll weaken, and, in turn, weaken you.”
Tim feels hollow. The extra appendages are a heavy weight on his back, pulling his shoulders down. How can he make Jason understand that these wings are a violation? That he may never truly consider them to be part of him, despite being literally attached by tendon and bone.
Tim doesn’t answer. He just looks out on the rolling farmland of New Jersey, and unfurls the hulking wings. They cast a shadow down into the valley, and Tim can feel playful air currents pulling and catching at the vanes of his feathers. His heart swells inexplicably.
He hasn’t done this in a while. Tim bends his knees, and with a great whoosh he’s up. It’s pretty windy, but he’s got solid bones and is much heavier than a bird. He catches an updraft and soars down the mouth of the little valley. Jason whoops behind him, and Tim grins despite himself.
His body works well with the wings, Tim has to admit that. The way he can turn on a dime with little more than a shift of his chest, the wings reacting and compensating instinctually as he turns to face Jason again, is particularly satisfying. He gains altitude with a few powerful beats, and has a sudden idea.
–
“And then he fucking dive-bombed me!” Jason crows, half mad, half proud.
Dick cackles, and Damian turns to Tim with shining eyes.
“Timothy, you will train me with your new abilities.”
Tim smiles. “I don’t think it’ll work without wings, Damian.”
Damian scowls. “You underestimate me once again. That will be your mistake. Don’t be surprised when I fly at you from fifty feet in the air.”
Dick lights up. “Dami, if you wanted to learn trapeze, all you had to do was ask me.”
Damian looks so considering for a second that Tim and Jason burst out laughing. Dick just smiles and shrugs. Tim reluctantly lets his wings settle around his brothers as they start the movie they had originally set out to watch.
Tim smiles as they all instinctually nestle closer into Tim’s wings.
This, Tim thinks, is something I can get behind.