Chapter Text
Tim's thoughts as he lay dying weren't anything poetic or unique. They were more along the lines of, 'this fucking hurts,' and 'I don't want to die. I really don't want to die. I'd give up almost anything to not die. Even coffee. I'd give up coffee to not die.' His pleas to the coffee gods went unanswered.
Tim died.
.
.
.
And then he wasn't dead anymore. He'd definitely been dead, Tim was absolutely sure he'd just been dead. But now he wasn't. He wasn't sure he was exactly alive though. He couldn’t see or hear. His body felt weird and there were things squirming around him. Something warm and wet ran over his back. Despite all of these distractions, all of Tim's focus zeroed in on one thing: he was hungry, and something smelled amazing .
He crawled toward the smell, clambering over furry little bodies to get to his prize. He nosed around till he found what he was looking for and clamped down. The burst of warmth and flavor across his tongue was amazing, better even than coffee. Tim drank and drank until his belly was full and sleep overtook him.
…
Things stayed like that for a while. Tim ate and slept and didn't have much energy left for thoughts. He did notice he was getting bigger and stronger, but he didn't exactly understand what was going on until he opened his eyes.
'I'm in a basement,' he realized. It was more of a crawl space than a basement really, all dust and cobwebs, but it was warm and dry and that's all his mother cared about. Wait, mother?
Tim lifted his head and looked into the chocolate brown eyes of a dog, a huge dog who could easily fit his entire body in her mouth. But Tim didn't feel afraid when he looked at her, only warmth and love. His gut told him this was Mother and the wiggling bodies around him were siblings . Tim had had siblings before . He remembered his brothers, but he had a hard time holding onto his train of thought. He was hungry again, and needed food. Mother provided, though Tim could hear her stomach growl and worry settled deep into his bones.
Worry was familiar to Tim. Worry meant he needed to plan, to plot, to find a solution to the worry. Mother was hungry, and his siblings were hungry, and Tim was hungry. He was sure he could find a solution to these problems if he just had the energy to think. He didn’t have the energy to think, only to eat and grow. So he ate, and he waited.
…
Mother had left again. Tim hadn't realized she left them alone most of the time before he could open his eyes because she always fed them first and then they slept while she was gone. But now he could see, and his siblings could see. They were all growing and were beginning to have energy to do more than just eat and sleep. Mother had told them to stay in the den. Tim didn't fully understand how he knew that's what she said, but the message was clear, don't leave the den .
But the den was large, and his siblings wanted to play. Tim didn't really want to play with them, he wanted to think and figure out what was going on, but his puppy brain had other ideas and he found himself rolling around in the dust wrestling with his siblings. He decided that this was a good thing. He was stuck in this body for now, he needed to know how to move it correctly. So now his day's consisted of eating, sleeping, and playing.
…
Tim had grown a lot since he'd first drank Mother's milk, and he finally had the energy to actually think. Mother appeared to be a stray black lab. Judging by him and his siblings, Tim figured their father was some kind of shepherd. They were black but their fur was longer and unrulyer than Mother's . Tim's in particular would never lay flat no matter how much Mother groomed him. All of their ears were starting to lose their floppiness and were beginning to stand upright, though Tim's right ear remained determinedly floppy.
There were five of them in total, himself and four others. Two were girls and including Tim there were three boys. Some part of his brain that wasn't a dumb puppy found it interesting that he was a boy. He didn’t understand how or why he'd been reincarnated, as clearly that's what had happened, but he found it odd he was male. However, there was about a 50/50 chance he'd be male. Actually it was close to 49% chance he'd be male, 49% he'd be female, and 2% he'd be intersex, but that was more math than his dumb puppy brain could really handle.
His siblings had blue eyes. Tim had to assume he had blue eyes too, but he couldn’t be sure until he found a mirror. Nothing in the den was reflective enough. He'd thoroughly explored it already. The only interesting thing he'd found was a desiccated rabbit corpse. His dumb puppy brain had had a blast rolling on it. Tim thought it was disgusting but it was usually useless to argue with puppy brain. Puppy brain was very loud and very demanding, it was usually less of a headache to give it what it wanted.
…
Mother hadn't come back tonight. Tim sat in the den with his siblings around him, all of their bellies growling with hunger, but Mother wasn't back.
Tim's siblings whined. They were hungry but Mother had told them, stay put . Puppy brain wanted to stay put. But Tim wasn't a puppy. He was a 19 year old vigilante, and reincarnation or not, he wasn't going to listen to his dumb canine brain. Tim did what he'd always done when a parent told him to stay put but staying put was the wrong thing to do. Tim left the den to look for help.
…
The scents of the city hit him full force in his sensitive nose. He hadn’t noticed it over the scent of Mother and siblings and dust and piss, but the reek of Gotham, of home, was undeniable. Tim had somehow been reincarnated right in his city. He knew this place better than he knew himself. He could navigate its streets with his eyes closed. He knew exactly where he was, an abandoned suburb on the edge of the city. It would be a long walk to the city proper, but Tim didn't have much of a choice. Mother would have come back if she could, which meant something had happened to her. Either she'd been killed or captured, which meant it was up to Tim to save himself and his siblings.
His goal in mind, Tim marched toward the lights and life of Gotham proper.
…
Tim really hated his canine brain. It kept getting distracted by smells and sounds. Twice he'd been pulled off track by the scent of food only to be stopped by dumpsters he was too small to climb. Why had Mother chosen a den so far from civilization? It was making finding food for him and his siblings almost impossible. He'd eaten a few bugs he'd come across, but they hardly filled his belly. Caine brain really wanted to eat a rotting bird corpse he found under a tree, but Tim had fought tooth and claw not to put that festering thing in his mouth, he didn't want to get sick. Feeling defeated and tired, Tim headed back to the den.
…
Something was wrong.
Tim crawled back into the den but it was empty. He could still smell his siblings, but it was an old scent. He searched every corner but he couldn’t find them. He could smell human too. People had come in and taken his siblings, and Tim hadn't been there. Feeling even more distraught than before, Tim rushed out of the den, determined to find his siblings , and ran straight into a trap. The noose tightened around his throat and Tim yelped in fear.
"It's okay puppy," someone said. It wasn't okay, he'd been caught, and Mother was missing, and his siblings were missing. Tim struggled and snapped his little puppy teeth at anything that came close.
"He's a fighter huh," someone said. He fought but it did no good. He was put in a crate in the back of a van. Tim lunged at the bars before he realized others were in the cage already.
His siblings huddled at the back of the crate. Tim yipped in joy and snuggled into them, glad for their warmth. He didn’t know where Mother was, but at least his siblings were safe.
…
Tim did not like the animal shelter. It was cold and filled with the stink of fear and chemicals and piss. People stuck him with needles and forced him to swallow bitter pills. But there was plenty of food and they gave him and his siblings toys to chew and tug on so at least canine brain was happy.
They were together and safe. They ate and grew and his siblings decided that humans were good. Tim didn't really agree with them, but he tried not to push the humans too far, bad dogs didn't survive in shelters. Tim was used to being a good boy. He'd behaved most of his childhood. He could follow the rules for now.
…
Tim was so sick of people cooing over him. He got it, puppies were cute, and canine brain always wagged his tail and wiggled in delight when humans paid attention to him, it was definitely canine brain and not Tim's deep seeded need for attention and approval.
People loved his one floppy ear and always complimented his blue eyes, so at least he knew he was right about his eye color.
He guessed that he and his sibling weren't up for adoption yet as despite the number of people who came to baby talk at them, they never left with one of them. It wasn't long before he learned why.
…
They took him back to the sterile smelling room and made him very sleepy and when he woke up, he had a cone on his head and a soreness between his back legs. He'd been separated from his siblings in his own pen now, though he could smell them nearby so canine brain only freaked out a little. Tim might have been more upset that they'd nurtured him, but his mind felt clearer than it had since he'd been reincarnated. Sure the pesky canine brain was still there, but it wasn't as loud and demanding as it had been. He could think in complete sentences again and not just images and emotions. Finally, he could plot and scheme.
…
Here's what Tim knew:
- He'd died. That was very clear. He and the rest of the bats had been dealing with a mass breakout at Arkham and someone had viscously stabbed him in the gut several times. He'd probably bled out before anyone else realized what had happened.
- He'd been reincarnated as a dog, specifically a black lab mix. According to the calendar he'd seen in the vet's office and the general autumnal decorations he'd seen, it had been eight months since he died. From what the vets said he was about two months old, which meant he'd been in some limbo state for six months.
- He could not let anyone know he was anything other than a normal dog. If anyone figured out he actually was, they were liable to experiment on him.
- He needed to find a way to get back to his family as fast as possible. They won't turn him over to scientists and they had friends who were magic users. They'd figure out a way to make him human again.
Tim had a plan. It was a simple plan. Get out of the shelter, find Red Hood, Batman, or Robin on their patrol, get their attention, and show them he wasn't just a dog. So far his plan for proving he wasn't just a dog was to bark at them in Morse code. SOS and their names should get their attention. If that didn't work, he'd think of something else. But first, he had to get out.
Climbing out of his pen was easy enough, but the knob on the door to their wing proved trickier than he expected. The staff found him and put him back before he managed it.
Next time he waited till a foolish worker left the door propped open with a brick. He climbed the chain link fence, bolted out the door, and found himself in the lobby. Several people tried to grab him, but Tim was fast and nimble and easily wriggled out of their grips. He couldn't, however, push the door to the outside open before someone got a snare around his neck.
They put him back in his pen, but this time with a collar and a rope tied to the wall. They also started calling him Seal on account of how slippery he was when people tried to catch him and how he'd slid between people's legs when they opened his pen.
Tim chewed through the rope before climbing out on his next attempt. They zip tied a net to the top of his pen after that. So much for that plan.
…
Tim watched as people came to the shelter and left with his siblings. A new plan formed in his mind. He didn’t have to escape the shelter! He could walk right out the front door with his new owners and escape then! Tim observed his siblings, taking note of how they reacted to new people. He tried to mimic them, wiggling with joy and yipping with delight. Licking faces and hands, and generally being adorable, basically just letting canine brain take the lead on this one.
Tim was nothing if not a quick study. He was adopted three days later and left the shelter with a young couple looking for their first dog.
They named him Snowball like they thought they were so funny. Their house was nice, a little two story in a nice neighborhood. They'd clearly been preparing their home for a dog for a while, there were a ton of toys and dog beds everywhere. There was even a dog door into the back yard, score!
Tim dug under their slat wood fence and was free that very night.
…
The walk into the city proper was long, but Tim wasn't a tiny puppy anymore. He was at least half grown and full of energy. The young couple clearly planned to spoil him rotten as they'd fed him fancy fresh dog food that night. It'd been exceptionally good and Tim was sure their next dog would appreciate it more. Maybe they'd go back and adopt one of his siblings! That'd be awesome.
Tim dropped into a sit to scratch at his collar with his back leg. The shelter hadn't kept a collar on him except for that brief time he'd been tied to his own pen and he wasn't used to it. He'd tried to get it off but without hands it was useless. Itch scratched, Tim stood and continued toward the city. He was just entering The Barrows and Red Hood's territory. Red Hood's section of Gotham was the smallest so Tim figured he'd have the best chance of running into him.
He wandered around the streets trying to keep to the shadows and away from anyone who smelled of alcohol or drugs, which in this part of the city meant everyone. He didn’t actually expect to find Hood on his first night searching, but luck was on his side as he spotted a familiar glint of red. Hood was up on the rooftops and on the move.
Tim chased after him, barking his head off and begging Hood to stop for one second and take notice of the crazy dog. Hood didn't stop though. It wasn't an issue, he'd stop eventually and then Tim would bark SOS at him and this whole nightmare would be over.
A sob stopped Tim in his tracks. He watched forlornly as Hood disappeared around a corner and Tim lost his chance. There would be other chances he told himself. Right now, someone needed his help, and despite everything he was still a Robin, he couldn't just ignore someone crying in an alley in The Barrows.
Tim crept into the alley, following the sound and scent of tears. There, wedged behind a dumpster, was a little girl. Tim whined and her head whipped up to him, she couldn't be older than five. Tim made his best friendly puppy face, ears up, the one ear that would go up anyway, mouth open and tongue hanging out. It must have worked because the young girl grinned at him.
"Are you lost too, puppy?" she asked. Tim thumped his tail. "I'm lost. It got dark fast and I'm not sure which way home is. Will you look with me?" she asked, ringing her hands together. "You can be my guard puppy and scare off all the bad guys, like Red Hood does!" Tim scooted away from the dumpster to give her room to crawl out. She did, and he licked her face. She laughed and gently batted him away.
"Your breath is gross, puppy," she giggled. Tim stood and nudged her hand with his head, guiding her to hold onto his collar. She did and together they headed out into the night.
"I know I live on 5th street," the girl said, "apartment C6, but I don't know where that is. Do you, puppy?" Tim did, they were only a few blocks from there. Tim steered them in that direction and the girl followed.
The kid kept up a constant stream of chatter, but Tim wasn't paying attention. He was too busy tracking anyone who might approach them. He growled at a few men coming up the sidewalk towards them. They wisely crossed the street.
Tim found the apartment building easily, the little girl squealing in delight when she recognized the building hurt Tim's sensitive ears. It was one of those buildings with internal doors, so Tim was forced to enter the building and ride an elevator to get the kid to her front door.
"Mia!" the mother cried as she scooped her daughter into her arms.
"Mama! This puppy helped me!" Mia pointed. Tim was already trying to creep away, but at the kid's exclamation, the Mother's attention turned to him.
"Are you lost?" she asked. Tim bolted.
"James! Stop the dog!" The woman cried to a man who'd just stepped out of his apartment. Tim slipped through his legs and bolted for the elevator. He pushed the button with his nose, but the door didn't open before a hand was around his collar. Tim desperately resisted the urge to whirl around and bite. A dog that ran away was one thing, but he'd get put down for sure if he bit anyone.
Accepting defeat, Tim was led back to the girl's apartment. They locked him in a bathroom for the night with a bowl of water. In the morning, they called the number on his tags and his owners came to pick him up.
The next time he was allowed in the yard by himself, there was an electric wire around the edge of the fence and a shock collar around his neck. If he got close, the collar would beep, and if he got closer than that, it'd shock him. He wasn't going to be digging out any time soon. He needed a new plan.