Work Text:
The Tower has everything Tim could ever need: one desk, one bed, one window, no doors; and an empty wicker basket, sent up full, on a rope too frail to hold him. The window-frame faces the valley, running water, green growing things, and the hazy bluish outlines of the Gotham Ridge. Sunlight filters through the forest crowns; birds flit from branch to branch, basking in it; Tim sits in an awning shadow. Mother wouldn’t let him risk his delicate complexion.
Tim always listens to Mother, even when he wants to gouge a bubbly line through his jugular. Tim tried with a pen-knife, once, when the Tower was new, and he handn’t learned to listen; he leaves his quills in the basket when they dull. Wire netting spans the window frame; Mother knows best about that way, too.
It wouldn’t be so hard to listen if Tim had anything to listen to; his last couple sausages are filming over with a greenish crust. Tim can’t cut it off, so he picks it to pieces, one by one, back in the basket. Rainwater only goes so far before the body starts to feed on itself; he knows better than to hope Mother comes back before sausage mold looks edible.
Tim doesn’t have much body to feed on. He should probably get up and so something, move around, stem the malaise, but movement breeds hunger. Mother says hunger breeds character. Tim should be grateful how she feeds and clothes him, when he never gives anything back; Tim should never tell her how scared he is of building too much character at once.
His stomach growls, throws his eyes back to the sausage stubs, the single waxy cheese rind. Tim stumbles back to bed. Maybe he’ll have one of those dreams where Mother lets him out of the Tower, where she’s found someone to sell him to. Maybe his buyer’ll give him something to eat, before they force him into bed. Maybe Tim will die in his sleep, like Father from the poison.
Jason doesn’t really want to do this, gliding high over his old hunting grounds with a belly full of silver, but he knows what happens if you let instinct lie fallow out of the Pit. Twice now, he’s woken up in a broken clearing, smeared in blood and ash. Twice, now, Talia’s had to talk him down afterwards: “It’s only beasts’ blood, we’re nowhere near human habitation.” You’re not a monster like Willis. Not yet. But he’s slipping, bit by bit, and nothing gets a drake to settle down like handing him a hoard to hold.
Can’t go around burning down villages when some smug little idiot could swagger up and take what’s yours in the meantime.
Keen eyes comb the mountains. He can’t settle somewhere Bruce could find him, not before Jason’s done setting out the pieces for his Grand Reveal; nor somewhere mortal types could get to, when the urge to dive and burn and gnaw into gristle hasn’t had the time to pale; and it can’t be far from Gotham, if he’s to cull the lowlives Bruce won’t bother with — Child eaters, soul thieves, Park Row demoniacs. The hills pass, dip, and send something skywards.
To the untrained eye, it wouldn’t look like much; Jason’s been in and out of the worst these crags can muster, and can’t help the purr of recognition. There, in the crook of two hills, an old alchemist’s tower sprouts dustily out the soil. It’s old, it’s grimy, and the ground floor lacks so much as a mouse-hole for burglars to crawl through. Jason’s never seen anything so perfect in his life, and he’s seen Alfred’s cooking. Wind whistles in his ears as he dives, perches, claws scrabbling in the roof.
Cold iron seals off the window.
Clearly, nobody’s home.
Teeth catch in the metal, and a sharp jerk of Jason’s head sends the imp-screen screaming down to earth. Squeezing himself through the gap takes a bit of bull-headed limb-twisting, to flop bruised, boneless and breathless to the sanctum floor. He’ll have to rip it wider, at some point — but, for now, Jason can take all the time he needs to catch his breath before the main event.
Tim wakes to the sound of slamming metal, eyes slit open in the darkness. Did a bird crash into his suicide net again? And he missed it? The most interesting thing to happen in months? A bit of wriggling pops his head up out the blanket tent, to scowl at — an empty stretch of sky, where the basket pulley ought to be. Below it scowls an empty stretch of sky, where one of his shackles to the mortal coil should have been. One bird, stooping in blind, just outdid years and years of prying at the seams with his fingernails. Tim screws up his courage, slips out of bed, and immediately dives back under the covers.
There’s a dragon in his room. Tim wants to cry and squeal with excitement at the same time. He — he really doesn’t want to be eaten alive. Or burned alive, or torn limb from limb and left screaming, bleeding and alive while the dragon absconds with his legs. Clink, goes the dragon. Tim pokes his nose out of hiding. It shifts again. Clink.
The dragon — looks about as nauseous as a giant flying lizard can. It staggers to its feet, clinking all the while, swivels its head around to eye the throw rug, tastefully laid in the middle of Tim’s room. Clink, it says, ominously, and opens its jaws. Clink. Drool dribbles down its tongue, onto one of Tim’s only and hardest-to-wash worldly possessions. Clink, it says, and starts dry heaving. Tim doesn’t want to watch; Tim can’t look away. The beast shudders, clinks, and vomits up a mountain of slimy coins over Tim’s bedroom floor.
It stares, miserably, and the next time it opens up there’s smoke in its throat. Fire sears the hoard dry; Tim burrows down into his bedding, pulls the blanket heap over his head ’til nothing shows. If he stays really, really quiet, Tim can try and kill himself a normal way after the dragon falls asleep. He stays really, really quiet, for a really, really long time, before a giant scaly snout shoves itself through Tim’s fortress to sniff at him. After that, well — Tim stays quiet. But he can’t help the tears.
Why the hell didn’t he notice earlier? There’s a bed in the corner, as much as a mystical heptagram has corners, and Jason could swear he just saw it move. He stops coaxing the hoard into a more comfortable shape to glare at whatever homunculus the tower-keeper left behind. A place like this, probably has a dark damn aura to it; sorcery, sure, but more the neglect afterwards. Pump enough will into something? It won’t like being left alone; and everything here reeks of loneliness.
There! It moved again. Jason narrows his eyes into a seasoned glare, stalks over to the steady rise and fall of the creature’s breath, and shunts his maw up against its body. He takes a whiff, and recoils back into the open. That can’t be right. This is a magical building, centuries old, with no way in or out. There’s no way. Jason flicks his tongue, tastes the air, and butts his forehead into cool marble.
There is a human child in Jason’s lair. He bends back down to prod at it again, finds the thing shaking. Is this — is this normal human behavior? Some sort of traditional greeting, for para-Gothamite peoples? Jason sniffs at the shivering lump, licks its face hello, and tastes salt. Fuck. Fuck, the human’s crying, he made a child cry, what is wrong with him—
He tries for a comforting purr; it comes out a growl, and the kid starts gasping, horrible little choked sounds, tiny hands balled over its tiny face. Its scent marks everything in the room, now Jason knows about it; its scent, and no-one else’s. No dam, no sire, no Alfred-equivalent. Jason’s not Bruce, snatching any orphan as dares look sad around him. He’s not, but — this is his fault. The kid was here first, he sounds like he’s dying, and how, exactly, did Bruce deal with this when Jason was small?
Jason sinks his teeth into the bedframe, drags it loudly through the coin heap. Hatchling positioned? Check. Now, a tail coiled round it, tucked under a wing, and Jason waits. The sobs turn to sniffling; the sun bleeds out on the mountains; the hatchling’s breath steadies, soft and whistly.
Jason wakes to tiny hands around his middle, a teary face against his neck, and saner than he’s felt in years.