Work Text:
There had been an Avian in the circus, when Dick was little. Avians had been much rarer back then, even if they were still incredibly uncommon today, but people had enjoyed the novelty of seeing bird-like wings on a human back - who wouldn’t, when the phenomenon was still new and exciting and intriguing? Dick had kept his distance out of politeness after seeing her face twist and scowl when customers and performers alike approached her, but from afar he had admired immensely her silky white feathers, how neat and straight they sat when she folded them against her back, and their shape and breadth in the air when she spread them out during her act, gliding from a platform at the top of the tent all the way down to the sawdust-covered floor and landing gracefully with precise, practised movements. To Dick’s child mind, ‘Avian’ had equated with ‘beauty’ by her influence.
The kid Bruce brings home is nothing like that.
At first, Dick doesn’t know what’s so significant about him that Bruce would bring a street kid to the Cave in the first place. He doesn’t look older than twelve, though Dick knows that kids like that often end up stunted by malnutrition, and he’s grubby in a worked-in way, the way that comes from extended time spent in this state. It takes Dick a few seconds (shamefully long, considering the detective training Bruce drilled into him) to notice the wings, because of how painfully tightly the kid has them clenched against his back, bunching his shoulders almost to his ears in an attempt to hide them. From here, all Dick can see is pale brown downy fluff, but it captures his attention so fully that he doesn’t realise his staring until he catches the kid glaring up at him.
Avians are rare, sure, but there’s nothing that would stop one from being born into poverty. Unfortunately, Dick knows, most of those kids escape the public consciousness, being kidnapped or even sold into trafficking schemes, or worse. This kid is one of the lucky ones, he thinks, because someone good managed to reach him before someone bad did.
Shaking off the shock of realising just why Bruce decided to bring the boy home with him, Dick forces his face into a friendly grin and crouches down to be closer to his eye level. “Hey,” he says. “My name’s Dick, what’s yours?”
The boy doesn’t answer immediately, his eyes darting distrustfully between Bruce and Dick in quick, panicky movements. At this level, Dick can see more differences between this kid and the image of Avians he’s come to expect over the years, supplemented by those who’d appeared in the media and the scarce few he knew himself - every one of those had been pretty much entirely human besides the wings, discounting the occasional feather in an odd place or sharper fingernails and the like; all subtle pointers to their nature but not enough to distance them from the marker of humanity, despite the different label their extra anatomy thrust upon them.
The kid in front of him is the most bird-like Dick’s seen thus far. The same kind of down that covers his wings is present along his hairline, tiny baby feathers that blend with his black hair almost imperceptibly, and dot his sideburns in a slight curve along the top of his cheekbones, just under his eyes. His hands are filthy, but even through the dirt, Dick can see scutes along the back of them, with smaller scales stretching down his fingers and up his wrists up to about halfway up his forearm, and sharp black nails curving over his fingertips.
“Jason,” the kid mutters quietly, finally offering Dick an answer to his question, and then nods jerkily at the open expanse of cave behind Dick. “This is where you live?”
“Well, not in the Cave part,” Dick concedes, hoping that if he establishes a rhythm of conversation, Jason will open up a little more and relax his tense form, but Jason instead falls back into stubborn silence, with each second looking increasingly like he wants to turn tail and leave. Bruce nods at Dick as he walks past, heading towards the computer and peeling the cowl back from his face, and Dick wonders if that meant he was doing the right thing or that he should try again, and if it would kill Bruce to actually use words every once in a while, but that’s not an argument he feels like starting up again, especially with their new audience, so he simply turns his full attention back to Jason, ignoring the clattering of keys as Bruce starts typing up his reports for the night.
“Did you eat on the way here?” he asks, casting a glance towards the still-open doors of the Batmobile, where fast food wrappers litter the footwell of the passenger side. Jason follows his gaze but doesn’t reply, shooting suspicious glances sideways as if he’d be reprimanded for it. Dick changes directions. “Do you want to take a shower? I can grab some clean clothes for you.”
That, at least, gets a stilted nod, and Jason lets Dick lead him across the cave, passing by the training mats on one side and the infirmary on the other to where shower stalls are tucked away behind a locker room. Before they head in, Jason’s clawed little hand darts out and grasps at Dick’s sleeve, stopping him in his tracks. Dick smiles patiently and waits for Jason to say what he very clearly wants to say.
“I know who you are,” Jason mutters in a slightly challenging tone. Dick waits a second to see if he’s going to continue that thought, but Jason’s staring at the ground between them, deliberately avoiding eye contact.
“Yeah?” Dick eventually prompts.
Jason jerks his chin over his shoulder, towards the computer hub, and Dick looks too, watching Bruce’s silhouette against the backlighting of the monitor, his features hidden by the contrasting light. “That’s Bruce Wayne?” Jason says.
“Yeah,” Dick says again. Jason pulls his hand away from Dick’s sleeve, fidgeting and scratching at the backs of his own hands, and Dick realises he’s going to need far more patience with Jason than he thought he was already giving, letting him take the time to compose his thoughts.
When Jason does speak again, there’s a careful, conversational tone forced into his words. “You know,” he begins, “A lot of rich folks pay a lot of money for people like me.”
It’s a comment loaded with implication, one that makes Dick’s stomach roil, especially with the casual air Jason had delivered it with, but he forces his face to stay calm and neutral. “Well,” he says, keeping his voice light. “I wouldn’t, and Bruce wouldn’t, and nothing like that’s gonna happen to you, so you don’t have to worry.”
“Sure,” Jason says, but his voice is flat, and Dick realises this is less of an ‘I agree’ and more of a ‘For the sake of ease, I’ll go along with that’.
That seems to be the end of that conversation. Jason shrugs past Dick, avoiding any form of physical contact, even accidental, and disappears into the shower stalls. Dick makes a diversion to the lockers, rummaging through his own until he has a clean shirt and some old gym shorts that will almost definitely be too big on Jason but would do for now, and drops them on the bench for him to find when he’s done.
In the meantime, he’d have to tackle Bruce.
He knows from experience that Bruce is more than alert enough to hear him coming, but even so, he makes a point of scraping his soles against the metal grating of the floor, hoping he can channel enough of his frustration that he can keep the coming conversation civil. Indeed, Bruce swivels around in the computer chair before Dick is even close, and then waits silently for him to have the first word. As usual.
Dick manages to refrain from rolling his eyes at the man’s predictability and, rather than give him the satisfaction of using his interrogation techniques on his own family, makes a questioning gesture in the direction of the showers and waits for Bruce to explain. There’s a silent impasse until Bruce sighs, concedes, and taps at the keyboard to maximise a tab on the monitor.
“His name is Jason Todd. I found him in Park Row, trying to get the hubcaps off the Batmobile to sell.”
Dick whistles appreciatively. “Smart kid,” he says. “Those things are one-of-a-kind, aren’t they? Custom made?”
Bruce grunts in what Dick assumes is an affirmation. He gestures to the article on-screen. “He has no birth certificate, no medical records, no recorded evidence of his identity at all. This is all I could dig up.”
Dick skim-reads the article; it’s a piece from the Gotham Gazette dated a few years prior detailing a domestic disturbance that wouldn’t have garnered the kind of attention that would attract a newspaper reporter, especially considering it stemming from Crime Alley, but for the rumour that an Avian was somehow involved. Neither party involved confirmed or denied the rumour, and the situation was unfortunately resolved with no charges pressed, but Dick got the gist of what was being implied - that the man, possibly Jason’s father, had been using his Avian kid to get attention from all manner of unsavory types, and the woman - Jason’s mother - had suffered physical consequences for refusing to let them enter the apartment. Dick has to swallow hard around the lump growing in his throat, trying to quell his disgust over the injustice of the situation, when Bruce switches to a second article that seems to punch him in the chest when he processes what he’s looking at. An obituary, a tiny two-sentence thing, for a Catherine Todd.
“Ah,” Dick manages to say when words fail him. It certainly doesn’t take a detective to piece together the whole picture: an exploitative father; the loss of a mother’s protection; judging by the dates, more than a couple of years on the streets, hiding his status by any means necessary; and what comes out of the other side of the equation is a jumpy, mistrustful kid who clamps his wings so tightly against his back that Dick is sure he’s doing permanent damage to his muscles.
There’s a slight cough from behind them, and Dick whirls around so fast his neck twinges at the same time that Bruce slams his hand clumsily against the keyboard and minimises the obituary. Standing at the edge of the hub, having approached undetected as only he could be able to, is Alfred, and behind him, drifting to one side uncomfortably to avoid proximity (but thankfully looking at the ground and not the monitor) is a much cleaner Jason, wearing his own dirt-streaked old jeans but the clean t-shirt Dick had left out for him. His wings, the down feathers still flattened with damp, are open further than Dick has seen thus far, and for the first time he can see where the down transitions to spiny, tightly-furled pin feathers near the outer tips. He’s so taken in by the sight that it takes a second or so to realise there’s a reason he can even see that much wing.
“Hey, did you cut my shirt?” he says.
“I have a knife,” Jason replies in a way that makes Dick feel like he’s daring someone to protest it. He can already hear the telltale shifting of leather from Bruce fidgeting in his chair, and can see Alfred’s expression turning to his patented ‘disapproving’ look - one that Dick’s been on the receiving end of enough times not to wish it upon anyone - so Dick quickly says “Okay,” to avoid having to deal with that issue when there are about fifteen others already at hand. Jason’s sight darts between the three of them, but he quickly accepts that no one is going to try and disarm him.
“I’ll show Master Jason to a guest room,” Alfred says curtly. “I expect the pair of you will be upstairs shortly?” It’s not a question, and never has been, but Dick and Bruce are both well-trained enough to nod in agreement before Alfred turns away with an approving grin. Jason follows him upstairs at a slight distance, glancing back at Dick more than once along the way with an indeterminate frown, and then Dick and Bruce are alone in the Cave together.
“So what’s the plan?” Dick asks, cutting across the stagnating silence. Bruce doesn’t reply immediately, staring thoughtfully at the monitor despite having finished up his work there several minutes before. That impasse again, and this time Dick is losing his already stretched patience with Bruce’s infuriating refusal to start a conversation. “Bruce. The plan. What are you gonna do with the kid?”
“He can stay here for now,” Bruce says slowly and quietly. “Once we learn more, we can look for someone who can take him in-”
“That won’t happen,” Dick cuts in. Bruce’s eyebrow twitches at being interrupted, but he doesn’t finish his sentence. Dick wrinkles his nose. “You know as well as I do that people will lie through their teeth over Avians. You try to find someone like that, you’ll have a hundred people claiming to be some distant family member or long lost sibling so they can get control over him.”
“Even so,” Bruce says carefully, massaging the bridge of his nose, “He can’t stay here forever.”
Dick scowls at that. “And why not? I did, didn’t I?”
“That’s not the same.”
“Why?”
Bruce doesn’t answer, and Dick juts his chin up defiantly, knowing that Bruce probably doesn’t even have an answer that doesn’t involve admitting he knows nothing about raising an Avian kid, and Bruce hates admitting he doesn’t know things. Dick, admittedly, knows next to nothing about raising kids, but he’s known enough Avians through the years to have picked up a few things about them, and realises that this is probably one of the rare fields in which he has more experience than Bruce, which is both strangely thrilling and incredibly vindicating.
“Jason is staying here,” Dick says, stabbing his pointed finger at the ground to emphasis his point. “End of story.”
And Bruce doesn’t say a word, which isn’t the same as him conceding the point, but he doesn’t disagree with Dick either, which in Dick’s book amounts to a victory. He resists the urge to storm off like an angry teenager and instead manages to walk away calmly like a teenager who’s finally starting to get a handle on being emotionally mature.
Once he’s upstairs, in the manor, it’s much easier to breathe through his feelings. Even after becoming Nightwing, the Cave has too many memories of being Robin that have been marred and overlaid with the more recent arguments and anger from both himself and Bruce. Here, on the other hand, there’s only the happier side of things, of a childhood and an upbringing and a home. It’s something that pulses discordantly in his mind against what little he knows about Jason, which is why when he spots a line of yellowy light under the door of one of the guest rooms, Dick decides to poke his head in to check on the kid.
Somehow, he’s only a little surprised to find an empty bed and an open window, the drapes fluttering in the invading breeze. Maybe a part of him expected this, he thinks as he wanders towards the window bay and takes a deep breath of the cold night air. Street kids are flighty, he knows that, and to someone like Jason, an offer of safety like this probably seemed too good to be true. But even as he’s coming to accept that, he hears a clatter above him, and he clambers halfway out of the window, twisting around to confirm his suspicions before he’s even really thought about it.
Jason blinks owlishly down at him from the roof.
“Hey,” Dick says casually, as if he isn’t hanging out of a window with only one hooked knee stopping him from falling two storeys.
“Hey,” Jason replies in the same tone.
“So,” Dick says. “On the roof, huh?”
Jason gives him a withering look and doesn’t dignify that with a response. It’s harder than Dick remembers to get all the way up on the roof from the windows, especially since he hasn’t done it himself since he was about fourteen, and he has to move cautiously in case his weight makes the tiles slip, but after a few unceremonious minutes of struggling, he settles down close to Jason but with a mindful gap between the two of them.
They sit in silence, watching the trees across the estate sway in gusts of wind, as wispy clouds slowly move across the blue-black sky, stars emerging in their wake, and Dick takes a few chances to glance sideways at Jason, watching some of the tension ease from his stiff frame, until a particularly strong breeze hits them and Jason’s entire upper body seems to lift, his wings flaring out to almost full breadth. He lifts his jaw, his eyes closed and a reverent expression on his face, until the breeze dies and his shoulders sink in time with the slow sigh he releases as he opens his eyes to see Dick grinning at him.
“What?” he snaps, quickly jerking his wings back in.
“Nothing, nothing,” Dick says. “It’s just, I have a friend who’s an Avian and he gets that look, too.”
“What look?” Jason snarls sceptically.
“Like he wants to take off with every breeze.” Dick smiles again, and it’s fond and entirely unguarded in a way Jason isn’t used to seeing, which just makes him curl in on himself further, hugging his elbows with scaly hands. “It’s not a bad thing,” Dick clarifies quickly. “I think it’s like, some inherent desire to fly or something.”
Jason tenses slightly at that. “Fly?” he repeats in a careful tone, and Dick realises then that Jason has probably never even seen another Avian and has no idea of his potential.
“Yeah, of course,” Dick says, once again purposely keeping his tone light and airy. “I mean, once your feathers grow in, I don’t see why not.”
To that, Jason goes quiet, a contemplative expression on his face. Dick, having grown up around Avians, seeing them in movies and on TV and being friends with one, finds it hard to believe that not even fleeting thoughts of flying had ever crossed Jason’s mind, but to a poor kid from Crime Alley who’d had none of that, maybe it was possible he’d only ever thought of his wings as ornamental.
“That butler guy,” Jason says eventually.
“Alfred,” Dick supplies, and Jason nods.
“He said I can stay here.” His voice is small and fragile, like if he speaks it into existence, this opportunity would shatter in his hands.
“Of course you can,” Dick says. “No question about it. For as long as you want.”
And Jason nods lightly, his shoulders relaxed and his fluffy wings half-open, and taps one claw mindlessly on the roof tile in a rhythmic pattern, and smiles a brittle smile.