Chapter Text
"I have studied many philosophers and many cats. The wisdom of cats is infinitely superior." -- Hippolyte Taine
Tim folded in on himself, his ribs screaming. He tried to stand, tried to roll out of the way, but he could do neither, and the blow from his own damn bo staff cracked into his side. He didn’t cry out, he wouldn’t give Jason that satisfaction, but he wanted to, because everything hurt and Jason Todd was trying his best to kill him and Tim desperately wanted to wake from the nightmare.
It wasn’t a dream.
“Let’s find out how tough you really are,” came the snarl from above him, and Tim heard the sound of a glove sliding along metal, and then—
There was a flash of orange light, and the clatter of his staff hitting the ground was the only noise.
Had someone come back to the tower? Seen a man in a Robin suit perched over Tim, and blasted him or something?
No, he would have been alerted. The Tower was still empty. Devoid of anyone besides himself, Jason, and Raven, who Jason had no doubt taken care of somehow. Attacking your predecessor in the same building as one of his best friends, who happened to be the daughter of a demon, would have been idiotic without some way to keep her away. Besides, orange really wasn’t her color.
Sure enough, when Tim turned around, not a soul was in sight. Jason was gone. In his place…. A cat. A cat, stumbling around in circles on unsure paws. A giant cat, maybe some sort of Maine Coon, with a splash of white across it’s chest and dark markings around it’s eyes like it was wearing glasses, or maybe—
A domino mask.
Oh, fuck.
“Jason?”
The cat snapped around, lime green eyes locking on Tim’s.
“Oh my God, Jason.”
The cat growled, fur puffing up around its shoulders in a way that was probably supposed to be menacing, but was actually just… cute. Tim inched forward, hand out. The cat’s eyes flicked from his outstretched fingers to his mask to his feet, once, twice, then it pounced, raking it’s claws along Tim’s cheek, drawing blood. He whirled around and batted it out of the air, then gasped. Not voluntarily, but what else was he supposed to do? He hit a cat! A large cat, a large cat that had previously been human and trying to kill him or something, but still a cat.
The cat also seemed to realize this, and Tim could have sworn it was raising an eyebrow at him.
“Oh, I’m sorry, you’re the size of a three-year-old and you just tried to dig your damn claws in my face!”
The cat just rattled a snarl.
“Fuck you. You were trying to kill me not even a minute ago.”
The cat turned up its nose and batted it’s paw at the ground, like it was saying, “If I wanted you dead, you would be already.” Ok, maybe there was no way that translated. It felt like it anyway.
“You’re a cat.”
Jason-Cat hissed.
“I could just drop you out of the window now. Be done with it. You don’t even have thumbs, you couldn’t stop me.”
Jason-Cat bristled, growling low and long. Tim raised his hands in mock defeat. “Fine, you want some Friskies or something?”
Jason, apparently deciding he didn’t need to put with any more slander, just stuck his tail in the air and stalked past, purposely swatting Tim as he passed.
“Brat,” Tim muttered, wiping blood from his cheek and wincing at the sting.
He had no idea where Jason was going, but Jason himself seemed to. He didn’t falter, just kept walking at the same pace. Walking. It was still walking when it was on four legs, right?
Stupid question. Really stupid question. He wasn’t exactly thinking logically, okay?
Jason the Cat led him to… the kitchen. He hopped up on the counter and looked around, apparently not finding what he was looking for, and hopped back down with an annoyed hiss.
“Dude, just tell me what you’re looking for, you smashed my ankle and it’s killing me to just follow you around.”
The cat glared at him, like it was asking “really, kid?” Which, fair.
“Alright, I’m grabbing my laptop, you got enough presence of mind to type?”
Jason rolled his eyes, a weird motion on a cat, but his perked ears gave him away.
“Cool, sit tight for a second.”
Tim limped out of the kitchen, asking himself the whole way why he wasn’t just throwing the cat down the trash chute. He could just lock him in the kitchen, wait until Jason tired himself out, and give him some night-night serum or something. Be done with the whole thing.
“Because that cat is a whole person, idiot!” his mind yelled at him. “Not just any person, Jason Todd!”
“Shuddup,” he grumbled back.
He got his damn laptop.
It was funny to watch Jason-Cat try and type with his paws, but eventually he got the point across. Very colorfully.
“You just wasted two minutes trying to type ‘fucking,’ man. That was unnecessary.”
Just do it, came the aggressive reply. Or, “jusdt do iy.” Tim got the gist. He managed to type “do,” which was probably impressive for someone without fingers that could move independently.
“Yeah, yeah, alright. I’ll call Zatanna, that good enough for you? I won’t even tell her it’s you, save face, or whatever. Though it would be really funny to explain that the “Big Bad Red Hood” has four paws and a tail.”
The cat didn’t dignify that with a response. Tim just swatted at him, getting another stripe of blood for his efforts, and called Zatanna.
“I have…. news,” was Zatanna’s final verdict.
“Good or bad?”
For the millionth time since she had arrived at the tower, the sorcerer scanned Tim up and down, looking like she was holding herself back from asking what had happened to him. “That depends.”
Jason, who was licking his paws from his perch on the coffee table, batted at her and hissed. She looked a little bewildered.
“He’s definitely processing everything I say.”
“I know,” Tim said, “That’s why you’re here, remember?”
“Yeah, except… Tim, he’s just a cat. There is no evidence of a person anywhere in that animal. I can’t sense a human mind. Just a regular old felis catus.”
“Bullshit, Z, I watched him turn into a cat!”
Zatanna hesitated. “How long has it been since you slept?”
“Too long,” came a new voice as Raven stumbled into the common room. “Someone drugged me, what happened?” Before anyone could answer, she zeroed in on Jason. “What is the deal with him, and why is he so angry?”
Tim dragged a hand down his face. “He’s the one who drugged you.”
She just stared at him half-lidded eyes either extremely tired or incredibly judgmental. “Timothy, that is a cat. It doesn’t even have thumbs.”
Tim just threw up his hands, thumbs and all, and stormed out of the common room. He was not going to be gaslit into doubting what he knew. Jason jumped off the table and followed him, all the way to Tim’s room.
“Why are you here?”
Jason somehow shrugged, looking bored.
“You did drug her, right?”
Jason nodded.
“Any idea why even an empath thinks you’re just a regular cat?”
Jason growled.
“Hey, don’t get mad at me!”
Jason scoffed, as much as a cat could scoff, and jumped up onto Tim’s bed.
“Pretty comfortable in the room of a guy you were trying to murder about an hour and a half ago.”
That earned him another pseudo-scoff and Jason batted the remains of a deconstructed grappling hook off the bed.
“Asshole.”
Jason hissed.
“Okay, what do we do now, oh wise one?”
Jason pawed at the bedspread like he was playing a little piano. Or typing. It was probably supposed to be typing.
“My laptop is in the kitchen.”
Who knew a cat could look so menacing?
“Okay, fine. Good God, man, a little patience please? I’ve been up for almost three days straight and I am ninety percent certain you gave me a concussion.” He paused. “You know what? You’re just lucky I haven’t cut you up into little kitty-squares or something. Some gratitude would be appreciated.”
Jason growled. Again. Tim was very certain cats weren’t supposed to be that big.
“Yeah, yeah, I’m going.”
Tim was afraid he’d have to walk back past Raven and Zatanna, but they had vacated the common room. He shuffled across the room to the kitchen, grabbed his laptop, and turned to go back to his room.
If he screamed when he came face-to-mask with Nightwing, that was no one’s business.
“What the hell, Dick?”
The frown on Dick’s face sort of stopped Tim’s loading rant short.
“Tim, are you okay?”
Well, wasn’t that the million dollar question?
“I’m fine.” He moved to brush past his sort-of-older-brother, but a hand around his elbow stopped him. He barely refrained from tearing the hand off and flipping its owner onto his back.
“Don’t lie to me. Even in the most literal sense, you are limping, swaying on your feet, and covered in cuts and bruises. Which I know weren’t there when I last saw you, and, as far as I know, the Titans haven’t had any missions. So. Spill.”
Tim debated it. He really did. Weighed the pros and cons and everything.
Pros: maybe Dick would know what to do.
Cons: Tim would have to explain to Dick Grayson that his younger brother was alive, a little murder-y, and also a fucking cat. And then, assuming that was even believable, he would have to deal with the fallout.
Yeah. That was a big fat no. Not happening. He couldn’t risk Dick thinking he was losing it, couldn’t let it get back to Bruce, and couldn’t take the chance that it would tear too many holes in their lives for him to fix.
“It was a personal thing. Took care of it, got a little banged up. They got into the Tower, drugged Raven, cornered me in the memorial hall. But it’s fine now.”
Dick didn’t seem the least bit convinced, but he didn’t press, so Tim counted that as an absolute win.
“I’m sure you’re here for some big, important reason, but I’d really like to take a nap first.”
Dick nodded. “Yeah. Yeah, of course. I just am here to check on you, Zatanna called me.”
“Yeah, that makes sense. She’s a snitch. Goodnight, Dick.”
“Um, ‘night, Tim.”
Tim just waved, and if the drunken way he stumbled back to his room wasn’t entirely an act, well, that was for him to know and no one else to find out.
After he set up the laptop and word doc for Jason to speak his mind, he just about passed out on his bed. He managed to not fall asleep in the presence of someone who had already grievously injured him in the last three hours, but it was a near thing. Through heavy eyes, he studied Jason as the cat typed. He really was huge, and a beautiful cat, if Tim knew anything about that. Like an animal you would see in the Guinness book of World Records under “Largest Housecat.” Tall ears, glossy tail, proud chest.
Actually, there was something off about his chest. He’d noticed the vee of white there, before, but now he noticed what it was hiding. A Y-shaped scar, from shoulder to shoulder and wrapping under to his stomach, that cause the fur to grow in opposite directions.
“Did someone perform an autopsy on you or something?” Curse his exhaustion-induced lack of filter.
Jason just leveled him with his creepy, green eyes, and typed three letters. Tim leaned over to look.
“Y-E-D.”
The eyes got greener, like they were glowing or something.
“Okay, okay! How the hell are you alive if your body still has the evidence of your autopsy?”
Jason shrugged. An odd thing to watch a cat do, but it was definitely a shrug. Then he started typing.
“Lazarus?”
He huffed and pawed out three more letters.
“Lazarus pit?”
Jason nodded. It took Tim a little while to place what that meant.
“The League?!”
Jason just nodded again.
“Oh. No wonder you were trying to kill me. Lazarus Pits messes with you.”
Jason meowed in a way Tim could only describe as tersely.
“You still wanna go through with that?”
Jason turned and flicked his tail in Tim’s face. For reasons he did not want to explore, Tim felt his heart sink.
“Right, well, I’m gonna set you up a bed in the bathroom and lock the door so I can go to sleep.”
Jason’s tail just flicked again. Tim sighed and pushed himself up, going to his linen closet to grab a duvet cover he could make a bed out of.
“You want a nest or a square?”
Jason just tilted his head to the left, and Tim decided that meant nest. He put it in the corner of the bathroom, across from the sink, which he filled with a little water and plugged. Back in his room, Jason was still sitting in the same place, shoulders a little hunched. “I left you a little water in the sink if you get thirsty.”
Jason didn’t turn, but he stalked back to the laptop and typed two letters.
“No? You don’t want water?”
Jason just shook his head and typed a few more letters. Tim had to take a second to decipher it, but he could eventually read it.
“Kill?”
Jason meowed again and tapped the screen.
“You don’t want to kill me anymore?”
In respond, Jason just jumped off the bed and padded into the bathroom. Tim followed and peeked in to see him curl up in the makeshift bed before opening his mouth in a huge yawn, showing off disconcertingly large fangs. He caught Tim’s eye, meowed four syllables and lowered his head. Tim crept back out and closed the door, but, after a moment of hesitation, left it just cracked. Sure, Jason could be lying, it wasn’t like it was easy to tell when he was a cat, but Tim figured that even if he still was feeling a little homicidal, there wasn’t much a cat could do in the way of ending a human life.
As it was, he spent almost two hours staring at his ceiling before his nerves calmed enough to let him sleep. He couldn’t bring himself to get back up to close the door all the way, hyper-aware that he wouldn’t be able to hear the soft breaths from inside if he did.
He dreamed of Robin and mice.