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To Hear, To See, To Smile

Summary:

Something about its gaze unnerves Bruce–it’s too still, too dead, too cold– and it speaks to the primitive human part of his brain that says ‘enemy!’. Something inside of him tells Bruce that he should kill it before it’s too late. It’s different. Dangerous.

The child, a boy with trailing bruises along his pale skin and eyes that shine just a bit too green, pauses. His fingers nervously pick at the iron collar around his throat.

Despite his petite frame and defeated posture, he registers as an absolute threat.

“You want to kill me too, don’t you?” He whispers, thin voice resigned and tired, the cadence of a man on death row. He sounds as if he’s exhausted by Bruce’s fear.

“How do you know?” Bruce has to ask, curiosity peaking despite how much the hairs of his arms stand up. .

The boy only shrugs.

--

Bruce has a bad habit of picking up abominations, but he's learned a long time ago that sometimes the only thing that monsters need to stop being monsters is a little bit of love.

Notes:

This is an accidental fic in which Sal and I braindumped about it for about five hours.

ALSO! THANK YOU BETA READER CALY., ILY

(See the end of the work for other works inspired by this one.)

Work Text:

It’s a child but it isn’t a child.

Something about its gaze unnerves Bruce–it’s too still, too dead, too cold– and it speaks to the primitive human part of his brain that says ‘enemy!’. Something inside of him tells Bruce that he should kill it before it’s too late. It’s different. Dangerous.

The child, a boy with trailing bruises along his pale skin and eyes that shine just a bit too green, pauses. His fingers nervously pick at the iron collar around his throat.

Despite his petite frame and defeated posture, he registers as an absolute threat.

“You want to kill me too, don’t you?” He whispers, thin voice resigned and tired, the cadence of a man on death row. He sounds as if he’s exhausted by Bruce’s fear.

“How do you know?” Bruce has to ask, curiosity peaking despite how much the hairs of his arms stand up. .

The boy only shrugs.

The movement looks pained and the child himself looks like he could topple at a particularly strong breeze.

“Everyone looks at me like that. They look at me and then, after a few seconds, they see. Like, actually see me. Then they try to kill me.”

He blinks at the comment more than anything, but unintentionally or not, the boy’s form wavers every time Bruce tries to refocus on him.

Oh.

His body smudges out of existence for a couple of seconds in between blinks, revealing something larger, hairier, with six deformed legs and a mouth full of teeth … on a puppyish snout.

A puppyish snout that hides fangs that could rip into Bruce’s skin, shred through viscera and tendons and bones, before dragging him to hell, sure, but still…definitely a puppy.

He stood there, seeing, and silently makes his decision.

“You hungry?”

He asks and the boy’s form snaps back into place, the black dog behind gone as fast as it came.

“I… yes?”

Bruce smiles then, hopefully one that didn’t shake as much as the previous one definitely did, and tilts his head back to the mouth of the alley. “There’s a burger place down the street. Let’s get you one.”

*****

The Drakes were never home.

Well. They were sometimes, but it’s more often than not that they're away somewhere else again a week or two later, saving the world by donating medical supplies to those in need.

This is one of those rare sometimes, where Janet and Jack are in the crowd at the banquet, laughing and mingling and recounting their adventures–

And today they’ve brought their son along.

That’s what Bruce is most interested in hearing about, as he (and the rest of high society Gotham) had been under the impression that the Drakes were childless.

It was hard not to. The gossip of the night is that the philanthophizing couple had finally, finally, chosen to christen their kid into their very first gala. A proud moment, if Mrs. Weathers were to be believed, as she pretended that the conversation isn’t leading to a business venture she’s been asking for funding of and Bruce pretends to still care after the first few minutes of small talk.

Dick’s long gone from his side, disappearing into the crowd with a flash of teeth and a mischievous glint in his eyes. Bruce is able to send Jason after him soon after, hoping whatever his eldest was up to, his youngest could at least be trusted to not to let both of them be caught red-handed in.

(Both of them are getting better, slowly, surely–)

Now to see what the mystery is all about.

Bruce makes his way easily through the party, with gentle steps and a confident swaggering gait that says he’s still not drunk enough to be mooched out of just yet.

And he steps into the only empty space in the entire hall.

It’s a clear circle, a space in which no regular human would dare set foot in. There’s a bubble of instinctual NO! that makes it so that a single child has nobody within almost thirty feet of him.

So when Bruce breaks it– that unwritten boundary, that unspoken rule– the kid's gaze jerks up, meeting Bruce’s for a heartbeat–

Eyes. So many.

They’re twisting on themselves, around the skin of his calves and on the back of his hands and on his face and even farther up– much farther up– hidden in the folds of the darkness of the shadows around him.

And oh god. There are so many eyes

Bruce breaks his gaze, having to look entirely away less he loses his head. He’s making sure to not make that mistake again, despite the tingling feeling of wrongness that prickles on his nape and down his spine, begging him to continue to look and how weird it felt to look.

He definitely won't make that mistake again, but he also definitely won't step away.

Because this child, with his hundreds of eyes and slithering shadows, was– is still a child. His human facade (just like Jason, who also hid behind a human face, because if people saw his too many teeth and too many legs they would kill him and skin him to hang as a trophy above their fireplace. They wouldn't care that they killed a bright, curious, affectionate child to get it. They only knew they had to.)

Tim's human face stares out at the groups of people milling around him. His eyes (only two, the left and the right one on his face) watch the people talking together, lingering just outside his personal space.

His (one) face remains impassive, (two) lips in a straight line and (two) brows tilted enough to look focused and yet unbothered.

But his (two?) eyes, tilted down on the ground as if hoping to get swallowed up–

The boy curls into himself, looking small and absolutely miserable.

"Hello," Bruce says gently but the boy still flinches at the sound. His gaze whips around as if trying to find who Bruce must have been talking to– someone, anyone– instead of him.

But there is no one. Of course there’s no one. No one else would want to approach the child.

"Hello sir," he replies in a scratchy voice, hoarse from disuse.

(Both Dick and Jason had had the same tone. It’s one that had been talked to and yelled at, but never been spoken with.

Bruce hated it.)

The boy keeps his head bowed, unsettling eyes downcast and pinned to his (two) shoes.

"You're Timothy, correct?"

Surprise colors the boy's face, red splashing across his (two) cheeks, as if more shocked that someone kept talking to him after the greeting.

"I... yes, sir– I..." his voice trails off. His form flickers for a second, revealing (?) eyes– more eyes–, shadowy arms– spindly pairs in the darkness–, and teeth– more than a full set of them.

One of the mouths is chewing nervously on a shadow, kind of like a child biting on their fingernails.

"I'm sorry. I– I can leave," Tim says, his voice trembling. "I will just...go now."

He turns his (two) feet as if to go– but before he could scurry off, his mother breaks into the empty space.

"Timothy," she says with a smile that is all broken glass and sharp edges. "Stop bothering Mr. Wayne. You know how you are."

Timothy flinches like he’s been struck and Bruce’s only interacted with him once, but fury flares in his stomach on behalf of this small boy.

“He’s not bothering at all.” Bruce smiles back at Janet, half-Brucie half-livid, with his eyes meeting hers head on. They’re safe if they’re looking at each other like this. They can control themselves better if they’re not so unnerved.

(Eyes are watching them, he can feel it– the both of them could– so many eyes–)

Janet’s mouth goes thin, pressed hard. “Bruce….”

Bruce knows that it’s not a secret that sometimes people look at his kids and see–

(Too many hair, too many legs. Way, way too many teeth.)

(It’s always listening, ears large are curving forward and always more every time somebody looks.)

(Unnerving. Unhuman. Unsafe.)

(Dangerous.)

“It’s fine Janet.” Bruce’s voice is hard, flat, too hard to be Brucie’s to be argued with. “I’m okay.”

Janet cuts her eyes away. She’s dressed nicely tonight, in a green dress that shimmers in the light. Her eyes leave her own child, searching out into the crowd and not to where a child stands silently.

Bruce steps forward, towards the child that hasn’t said a word, and keeps his eyes focused on the spot above Tim’s dark hair less he loses his grip. “Tim and I were just introducing ourselves.”

“Introducing yourselves…” Janet repeats, her voice trailing off like he was speaking another language, still not looking.

Her face is a knife blade as she turns but her eyes are unfocused when they dart towards Timothy, never actually seeing him.

It bothered Bruce, like a scab that he couldn’t stop picking.

Look at your son, he wanted to scream. All he wants is a look!

Bruce had learned with his two children that what they had desperately needed when he took them in, was just to give what everyone else had denied.

For Dick, with his sensitive ears– both flesh and wings and feathers that could pick up on heartbeats and bone creaks and the tiny movements of a body so keenly that he could predict moves before people made them– he had wanted to be listened to. He wanted someone to hear his words, to come when he called for them. Needed to feel like he was more than a glorified microphone on wings. He had been forced to listen to too much in his short life. Murders. Drug deals. Women and men mewling through sloppy sex. Children begging for their lives.

He was the perfect tool of espionage and it had forced him to listen. Now all he wanted was calm. To once in his life be the loudest person in the vicinity. To be heard.

Jason similarly had needed someone not to flinch. He had a horrific maw, Bruce had seen it fully revealed with no glamor– no nothing. Six legs, vertebrae that pierced his own back like he’s molting into something else. Doglike in the vaguest sense, like what Satan would have created if he designed a dog from description alone. And when Jason yawns– when his mouth becomes longer, splitting down the middle of his muzzle– then his throat and further up revealing that his ribcage was also a part of his vicious mouth– he is hellish.

And yet…still a child that wanted to curl up on Bruce’s lap and press a velvet soft muzzle into his hands. A tinkling voice that calls their names for a trick. Soft tickles asking for attention. Asking to look. Begging to be seen.

Just a child.

They both were. Are.

Timothy is too. Behind all of the eyes and appendages.

“What game are you playing, Wayne?” Janet asks, her eyes piercing through him.

He could ask himself the same question.

“I’m speaking with your son,” he repeats again, lifting a happy hand and resting it on Tim’s (one) head of spiderweb silk-downy hair. He’s long since trained himself out of the human instinct to shake in fear after the first child. “No one else seems willing to. Not even his mother apparently.”

Janet snaps straight, spine a steel rod in her dress. She’s heard it all before from the people around her, the people who whisper that her son was just so unfortunate to be that way, that it was just such a sad situation, that it couldn’t have happened to better people–

She’s never been insulted like this before, though.

“You’re done here.” Her voice is hard, cold, like blood-wet iron–

(Bruce wonders, idly, if it hurts Tim in the same way that iron does to his other sons. Would it burn him? Like iron burns Dick? Like it hurts Jason?)

She keeps her eyes on Bruce the entire time she walks over to her son, grabs one of Tim’s (one) shoulder with practiced ease, and starts to march away.

Tim says nothing as he follows his mother, he keeps his (two) eyes– his (one) human facade of a face– fixated on the ground.

Bruce gets the feeling that Tim doesn’t need to face in the direction of Bruce to see him– that Tim’s like his sons more than he’s letting on, a system for a purpose, a sense–

Bruce keeps his eyes trained on the back of Tim’s head, the black hair hiding shadows that twist and move in ways that don’t match how the light hits it.

Janet disappears into the crowd, swallowed whole by the gala.

A feat that’s impressive considering it’s with a child that has a wide berth of an empty personal bubble.

Bruce goes back to the party, back to mingling with high society, back to Mrs. Weathers and gossips and acts and people that hide their monsters much better than they have the right to.

He tries to say his pleasantries and to smile through jokes, but his mind is elsewhere, out to the boy with too many eyes and not enough people looking at him.

"What's bothering you, B?" Dick asks, suddenly at his side. He’s too good at sneaking up unnoticed, able to completely silent himself in order to hear everything better. Bruce had long since given up in trying to decipher what is because of his gift and what is because of what he’s been made into.

"Yeah," Jason says, popping up on his other side. A hairy limb rubs ever so slightly against Bruce's hip and thigh, marking him with Jason's scent without a second thought. "You look like you're constipated."

A smile quirked on Bruce's lips and he ruffled Jason's hair. It felt more like fur– two coats full– than hair.

"I met Timothy Drake tonight," he says in way of an answer, not even looking at his children as his eyes continue to scan and see. "He's a special young boy."

Dick picks up on it immediately, always the first to catch the undertones. "Special?"

Bruce nods, quick and sharp. Smiles at a passing Mr. Colbert as he murmurs back at Dick. "Special."

His eldest leans forward, traces Bruce’s gaze out into the sea of people, but what he was doing was hardly looking.

He was listening. Always listening.

Bruce wondered if he could hear each blink of Tim's eyes. He wonders if they all blinked together sounded like the clap of thunder or if all of them blinking at different times sounded like rain.

"Let's say our goodbyes," he says finally, turning both his boys away from the direction Janet Drake had left in. They flicker as they turn, so quick that only Bruce catches it.

They had held their glamour all evening and would probably spend the rest of the night without one. Feathers and shadows and fur and fangs would pad through the halls of the Manor tonight. Feather and shadows and fur and fangs would probably end up in Bruce's bed.

Which was fine, a visit to the Drake Manor in the cold chill of 4 am would not require their human skins.

*****

“–of all the things you could have done!”

Janet isn’t shouting.

Jack is.

Jack’s always loud like that, and Tim watches as his father yanks open the doorway to their home.

Tim’s wearing his blindfold - the first thing his mother did, once they were out of the view of other people, was to shove it onto his face - but it’s never really stopped him from watching. He thinks it’s just his parents’ way of comfort. It’s useless– he knows this– but it’s the principle of the matter. Some people had blankets, some had stuffed animals.

The Drakes have their blindfold.

“We brought you out because of Wayne’s own abominations– if he can flaunt the two he’s picked up, then we can have one can’t we? We thought that it wasn’t taboo anymore!”

The door slams behind them all as they enter it with a resounding SMACK! Janet’s already slipping her way into the parlor with the wet bar and the imported alcohol. She’s got a stern kind of face that makes Tim yank his shadows back, that makes him pull hard on them to keep them close, keep them out of the way, because his mother doesn’t like to be spied on–

“I got asked if we were trying to pawn you off on Wayne! All you had to do Tim was to not talk to anybody and keep yourself together!”

“Sorry–“

“I don’t care if you’re sorry about the damage you’ve done! Do you know what you did?” Jack asks, the accusing finger he shouldn’t be seeing pointed in his direction. “You’ve already affected the stock of the company Tim!”

Tim can’t avert his eyes. He physically can’t.

He wishes he could, but there were so many eyes.

(96 last time he counted while he was shut in his room as his parents had company over during the rare times they were home. He had been locked inside the room with a plate of chicken rosemary pasta that was supposedly his dinner. He remembers how badly he wished that someone would come upstairs, someone would open the door, someone could look at him and confirm he was more than a ghost in his own home.

Close to 50 pairs of eyes, he recalls, shoving the half eaten plate to the side. The room smelled faintly of herbs and he can hear the jolly conversations outside his window and he’s still too much of a monster to be accepted. He remembers that much, at least.)

His father sighs, pointer and thumb between his eyes trying to smooth out the crease there. It was amazing how effectively Tim could give him wrinkles when the man hardly saw him throughout the year.

"Down 4% in an evening. In one single evening. And it keeps going down. Christ almighty."

His father paces in front of him and Tim must turn his body too effectively, followed too precisely, because the man's scowl turns into a sneer.

"You're doing it now aren't you?" he hisses, face growing redder by the minute. "You're using your freaky eyes. Your monster parts."

Tim flinches, shadows curling around him like a protective cloak.

"Disgusting."

"He can't help it, Jack," Janet says, between sips of her drink. Tim doesn't know whether the statement was supposed to defend him or drive the knife in more. "We expect too much out of him and it's our fault for doing so. I should have just shut him away like the other times, but now we know for next time."

There was something in the words, something like a promise.

It’s something that leaves a stone in Tim’s gut and bitterness in the back of his mouth.

Tim listens to them make sharp comments as if he’s not there, watches his father pace back and forth talking about the trade openings in the morning, and demands to know why Tim couldn’t just have kept to himself for one evening?

He watches his mother drink her whiskey and pour herself another glass, several fingers width, more than he’d like to count.

They send him to his room after several hours of this, listening to how the stock is projected to be down by almost fifteen percent, and Janet’s long since asleep on the couch.

Tim closes his door– (his parents don’t like it open, they don’t like it when they might catch a glimpse of him–) and curls his fingers into fists.

Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.

He had tried so hard. He had tried so hard! He had been doing so well to keep his eyes away! He had been avoiding people's faces! He had been quiet! Pretended to be normal! Small! Unobtrusive! Gone!

People stayed away from him anyway like something in the back of everyone’s mind knows when there’s a predator in their midst.

Wayne had been the first mistake, Tim hadn’t meant to be surprised by his bold approach– but he had looked up to that voice and … and he had flickered.

The whispered rumors that had been going around the whole night had exploded from then on.

His blindfold is lined with iron and locked with a key. His parents told him they were going to undo it when they leave.

They never do.

They just leave the keys on the counter, and Tim mostly undoes it himself making excuses about comforts and principles and blankets and stuffed animals.

Fuck!

Fuck fuck fuck!

Tim had been doing so well!

He doesn’t cry. He can’t, not with every eye at least shedding a tear and ending up all soggy, but he can wrap the shadowy little thin arms around himself to find comfort.

*****

Bruce stands on the hill outside the Drake Manor, trying to see into the murky windows.

He lets the shadows drape around him, letting him blend under their silhouette, letting himself be nothing but a shadow. It’s second nature for him to hide like this. Bruce knows it’s easy for people to catch a glimpse of something outside and jump the gun on calling the police for help– or worse, bringing a gun out and handling the thing out there themselves.

Fear of the unknown doesn’t ease and the human-on-human murder statistics don’t lie. With how their world is built, there’s a reason the GCPD has both a dedicated monster handling and mistaken-identity homicide team under the same violent crimes division.

From his vantage point, the house looks empty, almost abandoned with its dark windows and sparsely lit lawn, and yet he knows there are people in there. He had been spying long enough to have seen the Drakes go to bed and watch their bedroom light flicker off.

They should have long been asleep at this point.

Jason pads up next to Bruce. Unlike him, the smaller boy didn’t need to hide as much with his dark fur. He had six paws along his crooked legs, but was uncannily silent with all of them. They need to be, because technically, Jason's kind naturally preyed upon Dick's.

He presses a wet nose into Bruce's hand in question. Bruce pats it softly with a finger.

"Almost. I just want to confirm with Dick."

"They are asleep if that's what you're asking," says Dick, materializing again from thin air. His feathers never make a sound when he flies and he loves his dramatic entrances. "Timothy is still awake though. His heartbeat is too fast to be asleep." Dick nestles up to Bruce, shoulder to feathered limb, shuffling close on the side Jason wasn’t on. He doesn’t hesitate to shove his face into Bruce’s hand despite how the small wings on his face flattened and shifted messily in exchange for affection.

Bruce fondly scratches behind one of his many ears for his antics.

Dick hums a pleased note, feathers along his head and chest ruffling and puffing from the sensation. His many wings (five this time) settles along his back, ears along its ridges flapping, twisting, turning even at rest as if he can’t stop listening to everything within a ten mile radius.

“Well?” Jason huffs, shuffling his front paws anxiously as his eyes dart from his father and brother to that dark home. It’s not that he’s not as affectionate as his brother, but there’s an uneasy energy around him.

“Does this mean we gotta wait some more?”

"That's fine," Bruce says with a shrug, still scratching behind (another) ear and holding his eldest’s great head. "Preferred actually. He might answer questions without so many people around."

Dick tilts his head to the side, too much than what was naturally possible for a human, to look up at Bruce while not compromising his scratches. Bruce had always said he looked like an owl like that, with the way he could turn his neck in all directions and point his ears wherever he needed them.

Almost boneless if he really wanted to.

"You're taking a lot of interest in this kid," Dick says suspiciously, ears trained on Bruce, looking for any tell in Bruce's body language. That’s fine. He has nothing to hide.

"He is an interesting kid. You both will see what I mean soon."

Bruce doesn’t take point. His children are much faster than he is.

Jason barrels forward, the dark wine red mane disappears from sight instantly. He’s gone under the cover of the night, bounding up to a shadow and suddenly not being there anymore, like how old Greek mythology describes the way hellhounds traveled.

Dick raises his wings– (Eight? Twelve? Ten of them? Bruce’s head hurts when he stares too long, tries to make sense of all the feathers and the bones)– and takes off right after his brother in the air.

Bruce walks.

Walks because he was born with only two legs and two arms and no wings– but it’s not like they have failed him so far in his life. He’s at the very end of the normal spectrum the way his children aren’t.

Sometimes, very rarely, a human was born … wrong.

Wrong beyond the natural realm. Like their very essence forgets that there’s only two feet, or four limbs, or ten fingers.

An edge too close to something that hunted things like nebulas or the darkest depths of the ocean. A breath away from the things that crawl up from nightmares. They look like how it feels to stare into the void and feel it stare back at you.

It wasn’t hard to know who was unfortunate enough to be affected by the rare quirk of a cursed humanity. Easy to tell when you look at someone and suddenly have the urge to stab it.

More unfortunate to know that most of these people never live long enough to understand why. Most don’t live outside their first hours of birth before they are murdered.

Dick’s perched on the wall outside a window in which no light can be seen from, ears twisting and turning– the French window panes are blocked entirely– and Jason is on the ground looking up at it, nose up in the air and whole body twisted to alert them like a hunting dog.

Bruce is grateful to have met and kept these children in his life.

He pats Jason's snout as he walks up and passes him and gets a muffled WHUFF! in return. Jason only lets family do that.

There had once been a magician who tried, a man who could "see through the veils" as he had advertised himself. He could see through Jason's glamor, took a bit too much trust in how Bruce had "domesticated" Jason, had too much confidence at how the boy was still relatively a puppy.

He had nearly lost his hand to Jason's great maw.

"You saw which room it was, right?" Bruce asks Jason as he picks the locks to the back door. Jason nods, purple tongue panting from a seam in his neck as his muzzle remains closed. It kinda looks like a grotesque necktie.

Dick is silent up above them, probably fiddling with whatever locks the Drakes had on the window– if they did have one.

The security in this place was abysmal. Pathetic. A particularly enthusiastic robber– or a particularly scared hunter– could easily slip past their double locks.

Tim deserved to be better protected. Anyone could break in and do something with no one the wiser.

The door comes open easily after a couple of prods with the lockpicks. Bruce and Jason both pad inside quietly. Jason keeps pace with Bruce despite the fact that his six legs could easily outmatch Bruce's stride. In many times and many situations, the boy stays at Bruce's side in unfamiliar territory, when his anxiety is just a bit too peaked.

Just as Bruce is constantly aware his children were not human– (looking at them for too long was just a reminder. Headaches are a constant household thing. Some men had gone insane from being in the presence of their kind for too long. Maybe Bruce had gone insane too? After all, many people called him crazy for taking them into his home and letting them curl up against him at night.)– they are also constantly aware that he’s only human.

Jason's nose nudges him as he slows, hot breath against Bruce's back. He should be afraid, knows a regular person would be screaming at the sensation, but he just rolls his eyes and picks up the pace.

So impatient.

Doesn’t Jason understand he only has one-third of the number of legs?

His son huffs again and keeps nudging him towards one of the groundfloor doors on the left.

Bruce knocks when he gets there, gentle as a prayer, on the door. It’s showtime.

He whispers low and deep into the silence, “Timothy?”

The quiet around them is deafening, there’s no way that a happy home can ever be this sort of hushed, no way that this place is anything but held breaths and soft footfalls.

He’s sure even Dick would find the place more unsettling than peaceful.

Bruce gets no response.

Jason leans harder into Bruce’s shoulders, shoving him away, and then he’s pushing his face on to the door, listening like how his brother does, tasting the smells of the air and becoming familiar with them.

“Timothy Drake,” Bruce asks because that’s what he really came to do tonight. “Do I have permission to enter?”

The soft twist of a doorknob is his answer– and the door cracks just a little–

Shadows leak out of it, paper-thin appendages like dozens of long fingers wrap around the doorframe. Eyes– hundreds of colors of black to blue to white– crack open along the limbs, looking to see who’s asking, who could possibly call out his name.

He feels Jason flinch against him with a startled yelp, his mouth widening exposing too many teeth in surprise. His mouth comes open like a zipper, lips pulled back up his maw and along his sides, giant fangs ready to defend himself and Bruce.

Bruce thinks he should have warned him a bit more.

Suddenly, the windows slam open, because Dick hears (of course he heard) his little brother’s cry and bursts into the room with all his feathers and all his talons. He screeches an unholy sound from the back of his throat, all of his wings flared wide and big.

Timothy's shadows and limbs all curling into a ball. Eyes– too many eyes– darting around frantically if they weren’t squished by the force of him closing them.

"Dick stop," Bruce says, in hurried quiet whispers because his son doesn’t need him to yell, yelling this close to him would just hurt his delicate eardrums, and the frightened little boy was just that– afraid.

Dick stops with a frozen snarl on his lips at Timothy, sliding behind Bruce with his wings (it looks like there’s four of them now. Bruce never knew their exact number. Even when he preens them for Dick, the number is always endless, one wing could always be replaced with another, another could be hiding three underneath).

His talons clicks on the ground as he goes to Jason, and has to make sure his little brother is alright.

Not exactly the best meeting Bruce's sons had with others but also far, very far, from their worst encounter.

(There was a government agent once. He isn’t sure how he didn’t see how their eyes were just a little bit too crazed. Never had he thanked god for making Dick fast.)

Bruce pets down the feathers on one of Dick's wings, easing them flat from their ruffled state, eyes never leaving the shaking form in front of him.

"I'm sorry, Timothy," Bruce says calmly as his sons stir behind him, a pile of limbs and hushed whispers and distrustful eyes. "My boys just got a bit startled, that’s all."

It was amazing how easily they could startle, really, considering that there’s no baseline for the unnatural with who the both of them are. With a previous life of constantly running from people– people who wished to kill them out of disgust, to skin them for a pelted rug, to grind their bones into alternative medicine powder– that had made them anxious despite their natural weaponry.

His boys, the ones behind him who are coming down from surprise, of Dick who’s making a soft trilling sound, or Jason who’s ‘I’m fine.’ is slowly turning irritated, they’ve been through so much.

Something he’s trying to save Timothy from right now.

"We mean no harm." He promises.

Bruce turns to look at the boy, to finally get a good look at him outside of the judging stares of attendees, only to see his pale face marred by a heavy blindfold. It looked monstrous against his delicate cheekbones.

Bruce doubted it actually kept the boy from seeing.

"It's no problem, Mr. Wayne. I know I'm...unsettling."

Bruce frowns, not liking the sight of the off-white thing wrapped around Tim’s head.

It’s nearly covering his nose, before going to almost the middle of his forehead and to the back of his head. There’s a strap on his chin, keeping it in place, a heavy lock by his ear that makes it so it can’t be wiggled out of or come undone.

What in the world…?

Jason leans forward, still curling behind his father, nervous in a way that Bruce has never seen before.

Dick’s unsettled feathers ruffle, smoothen out, and ruffle again, his wings flaring in and out uneasily, the ears that make up most of his upper torso and head swivel around like mad– if Dick has any real eyes Bruce doesn’t know, hasn’t asked, but there’s none visible in the light of Tim’s room right now.

Tim’s room is bare, a bed and a dresser, sure, but almost nothing else. Tim sits curled up, knees by his chin and elbows crossed over them on the wooden floor in the center. He looks like he’s trying to make himself smaller, shadows wiggling tighter around him, eyes– too many eyes– focused.

“You’re not as scary as you think you are.” Bruce tells him, hoping to be reassuring, moving slowly in the space that screams for him to get out of. He knows that he doesn’t need to exaggerate his movements, Tim can probably see him in clearer color and higher depth than Bruce can imagine. “Is it okay if I take off your blindfold?”

Tim doesn’t move, still curled so carefully, but he doesn’t twitch his head in any direction.

“It keeps you safe.” He says, voice soft, so painfully soft, in the cadence of a child that’s resigned to something he doesn’t want.

“You’re not going to put me in any danger,” Bruce reassures him.

He crouches down next to Tim, hands steady, gentle, reaching. He settles them on Tim’s shoulders, letting the warmth of them leak into Tim’s small frame.

A shiver, full-bodied, Tim is fighting an instinct to move. He swallows, “I– I’m not allowed–I’m dangerous.”

The boy is so goddamn small and scared– and good lord he’s just a kid.

Bruce feels the moment his children realize it too.

Jason snorts, the rolling crack sound of it clicking through his thousands of teeth. “Because what? Because you’re different?”

“Can’t be odd if you’re in our presence, little bird.” Dick says with his mouth somewhere. “I think you see that.”

Bruce moves his hands to the blindfold again. “You’re not going to hurt us.” Bruce whispers to him, just as soft.

Tim shivers again, but nods this time when Bruce reaches for the lock.

It doesn’t take long before he pushes the folds down and leaves it discarded on the ground.

The blindfold leaves red welts where Bruce pulls back the heavy off-white fabric, feeling the metal that’s been stitched inside and brought to the surface from wear. Iron.

The metal burns the abominations, he remembers someone shouting once on the streets of downtown, keeps them in their human skin, and keeps them safe from being something that’s beyond what humans can comprehend.

Right now, it’s the same metal that leaves crossing red open sores across the face of an eight-year-old. The thin skin around his eyes (two), so, so delicate because they are a child’s, are burned with two angry sores framing them.

Fury licks Bruce’s stomach as he takes a finger and gently thumbs along the edge of one of the iron burns. Both his sons had had them when Bruce had brought them home.

Dick had been a bird in an iron cage for a mafia boss, only taken out to listen and spy, no matter what horrors he heard. They used iron quickly and liberally but always promised that they would do worse if he ran instead of coming back. They would find him. They would lock him up, they would use an iron instrument to burn into his ears and burst every single one of his many eardrums until he couldn’t hear any longer. In the end, Dick didn't need to run. He had been sent to spy on Bruce Wayne and never left.

They had sent Jason to retrieve Dick after. Jason was Dick’s natural predator. From his many mouths, he could make any type of sound he wanted. Sounds that could drive a listening abomination mad and leave them screaming on the floor. Humans too, though it was more likely to burst Bruce’s brain than anything. He could do it with a single howl.

At least, that’s what the legends said. Jason rarely spoke when he was on his paws despite his boisterous nature in his human skin.

Jason had found Bruce and had tried to demand for Dick despite the way his voice shook and his glamor flickered. He had an iron peppered collar bobbing on his throat and burning into his delicate skin with every breath.

Bruce instead of turning their runaway bird, had taken that same collar off.

No more abominations were sent after Bruce when neither Dick nor Jason were returned. Rumors had spread about the father of monsters being a monster himself.

He had hoped at least Tim was loved marginally better to be spared of the iron burns.

Hope is a futile thing, apparently, when faced by human nature.

“See? Isn’t that better?” He asks, putting away the blindfold and letting Timothy blink his glamoured eyes. Shadows danced and twisted all around him, the eyes on them all blinking too, curiously, some even slithering towards Bruce. The tight miserable ball of a boy begins to loosen a bit.

“It is,” Tim hesitantly admits, scared of his own words like he expects to be struck for them. “But Mr. Wayne, it’s alright. I can wear it. I know it’s better I’m uncomfortable than everyone be.”

Bruce is already shaking his head.

“As you can see Timothy I’m quite used to the company of—“ he doesn’t say abomination. He hates the word. They’re much more than what they are. Better than what he knows other humans are capable of.

“Others,” he amends. “I am not unsettled by you.”

It’s a lie. His children know this. Jason can taste it. Dick can hear it.

But Bruce can learn to be okay. He had done it before for two of his kids already.

Bruce knows what Tim is. He knows because he’s done his research ever since he first picked up that crying child who just wanted a moment of peace and quiet.

He knows that abominations are rare, dangerous, and come in three kinds, like all things do. Primary colors. The Fibonacci sequence. The Holy Trinity.

They’re no different.

Hearing. Taste. Sight.

Ears. Mouth. Eyes.

Dick. Jason. And now: Tim.

Tim doesn’t look like he believes Bruce, his gaze– any of them– hasn’t caught Bruce’s for a second, all of his eyes are fixated on the floor or to the walls, or anywhere but their gazes. A useless motion, considering that Bruce knows that sight is all of what Tim is made of. All of the focus and attention of the small eyes that litter around his skin and limbs comes from the boy, making Bruce himself feel vulnerable and seen.

“Why have you come, Mr. Wayne?” Tim asks. The shadows along the wall spread out, inching along, little quarter-sized hands with six or seven fingers each grabbing and holding onto the light from the table lamp with each tendril. The slowest ocean wave of spreading shadows that inch along anyplace that has even an inkling of brightness.

Sensitive to light, Tim is.

Not sound.

It’s Jason’s natural predator, something that could slip in between all those teeth and grab onto and tear off what they wanted with monstrous strength in each small hand. Something that could hold open a massive maw and pluck teeth like post it notes. Bruce has heard stories of them clashing, of the eyes, tearing through taste, shoving limbs into their mouths and taking whatever he likes and sees.

It’s the shine off of Dick’s feathers when he fully extended his skill set that would blind Tim. He has so many ears and he could move each of them independently, creating hypnotic waves of ears and feathers. Their mesmerizing motion combined with the gleam of the light could freeze a seer, and chase away the shadows that hid thousands of thin arms and leave them vulnerable to any attacks.

A balance.

He called it a balance at least. Less kind authors had called it a cycle of destruction. A way that nature ensured that abominations would never grow too numerous, that they would inevitably destroy each other and rid the world of their presence.

Rock-paper-scissors.

Bruce always wished that his children could hear stories about themselves that didn’t end in them dying a brutal death in a world that tries so hard to get rid of them.

“What have you heard about me?” He answers Tim’s question with a question. His children arch behind him, Dick’s feathers on his left and Jason’s fur on his right. They were watching Tim, in their unique ways, with sound and taste.

“You collect monsters,” his eyes dart from Dick and Jason. “You trap them in human skin and pretend you know nothing about it.”

Bruce’s eyebrows furrow without him trying. He wasn’t aware his reputation had gotten that bad. Both his sons snicker in their individual way, with clicks and ruffling so different that what sounds he produces, but the tone now is slightly lighter than before and less tense.

“I do not collect them,” Bruce corrects, ignoring his sons laughing at him. “They were sent to me by bad men. I decided I could be a better home for them and I kept them.”

Tim’s eyes (not just the (two) human-facing ones, but dozens of them along his shadowy tendrils) narrowed all at once.

“Keeping someone sounds a lot like collecting them…” he suspiciously glares, shadows curling around his limbs like a security blanket. “Do you want to ‘keep’ me too?”

Bruce isn’t good at the talking part. They all know this. Dick was better at this. Being a good listener meant he knew exactly what to say.

“Only if you want to stay,” he amends. “My boys stay with me because I love them. I’m their father. They could leave at any moment if they wished.”

It wasn’t hard to be better than most of the world when everyone seemed hell bent on killing his children.

Timothy looks at him, a war on his face. He seems caught between something like distrust and awe. Bruce purposefully meets his (two) eyes and wills himself not to flinch when dozens of pairs stare back.

“It could be a home for you too, you know.”

The twisting limbs that made up Tim recoil and suck themselves back into his human shape so brutally that even without glamor Bruce can see nothing but hard black edges. Eyes tightly closed, only two were open– right where they should be on a face carved from shadows. Both of them were almost the same shade of blue.

It looked like Tim was trying– and almost achieving– a very human form with only a darker than normal shadow to give himself off.

Tim wrestles the glamor back onto himself and pulls it forward with a force of will that can only be trained into him.

“You can’t say that!” He whispers in nervous tones. “You can’t!”

Bruce doesn’t respond beyond the raise of an eyebrow.

Tim grabs at his hair, “You can’t say that because that’s one of the things my parents are mad about! Their company already took a big hit and I wasn’t good enough to keep to myself and people are asking if I was just a gift for you at this party instead of their real kid–“

A soft hiccup, a start of a sob curling around it. “I– I–“

"I ruin everything," he whispers tiredly. "I tried so hard to be good and the correct shape with the correct number of eyes. To be the kid that my parents wanted. I tried so hard." His voice quivers at the end and Bruce resists the urge to rush forward and scoop the boy up.

He is so small. Too small to bear the weight of his own monstrous form– he was getting crushed beneath it.

He needed someone to come and help take the weight off. To tell him he wasn't a monster.

He could be a monster, if he really wanted to– all abominations could be just like every human could be. Tell someone they are a monster enough times and that's what they will become.

Did the Drakes truly not realize what they were inevitably creating by starving their boy of affection? When he was still just a child underneath all the eyes?

There was a tiny hiccup of a sob and it was a thin knife into Bruce's heart.

"Why did you walk up to me?" he asks, shutting his eyes and letting his hair fall over his face. He was passing into something more defeated and resigned. "Why couldn't you just leave me be? Everyone else was happy too. Everyone else can hardly stand to look at me."

Bruce moves forward.

He can’t–

He can’t listen to this child for a second longer talk like this.

He wraps the slip of a thing into his arms, hoists Tim up to tuck Tim’s face into his shoulder, and supports the body with his arm tucked under his thighs and another around his back. Bruce shushes him, gentle, so very gentle, and lets Tim rest all of his weight on Bruce’s chest.

“You didn’t do anything wrong,” Bruce speaks into Tim’s hair– it feels like spider silk– “You didn’t do anything wrong.”

Di

ck gives a little bit of a soft coo, wings moving to brush against Tim’s back. Jason lets out a low rumble, brushing his flank along Bruce’s back.

"I don't understand," Tim cries, limp in Bruce's arms and curling into his chest. Instinctually, he puts his little face against Bruce's collarbone, letting himself be cradled. The thin threads of his shadows whisper over Bruce's skin. It was a new sensation, but not exactly uncomfortable. It reminded him of fur and feathers.

"I don't understand," Tim repeats through a sob. "P-people don't even want to look at me. They can't stand it. Hold can you... h-how can you hold me?"

"You're just a child," Bruce says firmly, standing up with the boy. "What you were born as doesn't change that fact. You need love and affection like any other child."

Tim is still hiccuping but at least he didn't speak any more poison. For that, Bruce is grateful. He doesn’t know how he can stand it, even if it’s not directed at himself.

Bruce wonders if Tim had ever been told that he was just a kid if anyone had ever acknowledged that under the shadows and the eyes, Tim wanted the same things as everyone else. To be seen. To be loved.

"Hush darling," Bruce whispers, brushing the tears away with the pad of his thumb.

Had anyone ever wiped Tim's tears from his face before?

Bruce nods to the doorway, and Jason and Dick slip outside of it, quiet. They know not to interrupt something like this, not when they went through it once not so long ago.

(Dick had broken down into sobbing nasty tears, globs of snot ruining Bruce's night shirt. Dick had used sharp talons and torn holes and made scratches over and over again into where he had been grabbing tightly onto.)

(Jason had been screaming, hollering, and beating his hands, paws, hands against Bruce's chest. Jason had screamed his rough voice hoarse and lost it for three or four days afterward.)

Tim just sits there, silent tears down his face as he lets out little hiccups of rolling catches of breath. He grabs onto everything around him and doesn't let go. Bruce feels the tug in his hair, the grabbing of the skin at his throat and arms.

Relaxing in slow, steady increments, Tim goes boneless.

"Don't put me down," the boy whimpers, all of his shadows grabbing onto everything of Bruce he can hold. Bruce didn't even know whether he could physically put Tim down if he wanted to right now.

Being away from Tim, from this crying child, is the farthest thing from his mind now though. He’s long accepted that he’s past the flinching and the urge to be revolted by the sight, only having nothing in his nature but the urge to care.

He would hold the boy for hours, days, weeks if Tim asked him to. He could try to give back all the affection Tim had lost out on for years, try to make up for the love that he should have had all along.

"Never," Bruce promises back, hugging the boy tighter like he could imprint the promise into the boy's skin through force alone.

The boy is still silently crying, but his breath is hitching less. Bruce doesn't know how long he stayed standing there until finally, the boy quiets. He wasn't asleep, but he didn't make a sound, content to just be held.

Bruce walks forward, out of the boy's room, and into the hallway. Dick had nested down, talons disappearing into feathers and all of his many ears flat. Jason was curled up under a wing, half-asleep from all the waiting and tension bleeding out.

Jason yawns as Bruce walks out, half his body splitting with the motion, fangs exposed through his mouth, his throat, his ribcage.

Tim silently watches, going just a little tense, but not cowering away as other humans would. Although the motion had disconcerted Bruce at first, all he could find was affection when Jason yawned now, big and strong and so unlike the small ones he did before, as if there’s a collar that stopped it short.

"Come boys," he says, still balancing Tim on his hip. "Let's go home and get you into bed."

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