Chapter Text
Demigods were creations. One part mortal, one part godly, they made heroes, the most powerful beings bound to Earth, even though their backs had wings.
The story behind why every demigod had wings wasn't complicated. Prometheus made humans, yes, but he didn't just give them four arms, four legs, and two faces - no, he decided to really stick it to Zeus and gave them four wings to go along with it.
Zeus really didn't like that. He separated the humans, spared their lives, but took the wings and claimed them as his domain.
The wings didn't like that. They had little minds of their own, zooming left and right. They made their way into the mortal world, everywhere that they could reach, from the tiniest hummingbird wings folding themselves into petals, to buzzing bee wings in the hives. Zeus couldn't wrangle them by himself, so the gods agreed to help him on one condition - his domain would be shared. They would each lay claim to wings, and with those wings they could enter his skies.
Zeus was reluctant, but he agreed.
And so the gods laid their claim.
Zeus took the most powerful birds. Eagles, hawks, falcons, they all belonged to him. The ones that were predator and hunted with sharp eyes and went fast. Poseidon took the large, feathered wings of pegasi for his children. Hades took the vulture and the screech owl - the ones who spotted death from miles away, to act as his messengers, and the ones who were 'bad omens', to show his arrival.
Some gods had the same wings. Apollo took the wings of scaled golden dragons of the Sun. Hephaestus forged his in fire. They were similar, but completely different. Apollo's were soft, but durable - flexible and smooth scales. Hephaestus' were tough and had sharper edges, thicker layers of skin over bone and a claw in the middle.
The gods who took the feathered wings were more numerous. Athena gave her children wings of all owls, and the ability to change their shape and size. Hera took the prideful peacock, though no one except her had the colourful myriad. Ares' wings were ones that no one could quite make out what they were - all they knew was that they were always blood red and could hide knives like feathers.
The things is -
None of the gods had quite anticipated what giving their children wings would do.
This was found out as Pegasus, the son of Poseidon, startled when he turned into a large, winged stallion.
And then Daedalus only saved himself when the wax melted his wings because he shifted to an owl, his broken wings no longer only held together by wax, but melded to his shoulders.
Perseus, who changed into an eagle, swiped through the binds of Princess Andromeda, and gored the eyes of the Monster of the Sea.
By now, the stories have faded. Shifters are a thing of myth. The stories differ from person to person. Some say they are fallen angels to forever be cursed to stay on Earth. Some say they crawled out of Hell to bring down fire on the humans.
Well. They're not really that wrong.
Damian has known these myths his whole life. His DNA is something that is convoluted, messy - results of his grandfather's experiments with golden ichor. The ichor of Athena and Hephaestus, they'd deduced when his wings had grown in the first summer at Camp.
There were distinct markers on demigods' wings. It made identifying their parents much easier. Most demigods sprouted at around eight. Percy's had grown in at twelve. Thalia's at fifteen. Jason when he defeated Krios. The Big Three always had been dramatic. Growing in their wings did attract monsters, after all.
As time passed, their wings evolved. Smaller, since they had less need to fly in the sky. More durable, used more as weapons than a means to get away. Athena's, for example, was almost all owls. Their wings suited their needs, their personalities the most. When they shifted into owl form, they could change their size. Annabeth could grow to the biggest owl that they had seen before, Athena's blessing overlooking her on the hill. Hephaestus, with their dragon wings, had grown more fireproof, and they could also change colour, which wasn't that uncommon.
Damian, as a mix of both, had dragon wings that stretched out larger than his armspan, a little more suited for flying than forging, growing smaller if he wanted to, and darkening to black if he needed.
The thing is, shifting is instinctual for them after a few tries. It was literally their flight or fight response.
So which is why, when the building starts collapsing on him and Drake, Damian shifts.
He shifts into the biggest dragon he can manage and braces his wings above his head, grabbing Timothy with his claws and curling over him. Rubble falls overhead, making Damian grit his jaws together at the weight. His wings are durable, yes, but the Athena characteristics make it so they're weaker than the usual wings.
It's excruciating pain. He closes his eyes and tries not to pass out.
***
When the noise stops, Tim is surprised he's still alive. There's something warm around his stomach, and sharp, ow -
He stops short, frozen, at the sight of the blood-red scales on his stomach. There's a claw. A very large claw that is half of his height, grabbing him.
Tim's eyes go wide. He tries to breathe unsuccessfully, though it has nothing to do with the pressure on his chest. He looks up instead, trying to find something for his mind to latch onto, to make sense of.
There's a whole-ass dragon on top of him. A body, rippling with scars and scales, a snout and a wing held high above him.
A snort.
Tim meets the eyes of the dragon. Emerald green.
Holy shit.
"Damian?" he whispers, and the dragon snorts again and rolls his eyes. Yup, definitely Damian.
How is Damian a freaking dragon?!
The rubble starts to shift, and the dragon - Damian - starts to stand, shrinking a little. It's only then that Tim notices the large metal pipe sticking out of his wing, straight through the skin and dangerous close to the bone structure of the wing. He hisses a little - it looks like it really fucking hurts.
He doesn't get much time to study anything else, because suddenly the claw around his mid-section tightens, and he's hoisted into the air. He yelps. "Hey, wha - "
Then they're in the air, because Damian is flying. He's flying, with Tim in his claws.
Because Damian's a dragon.
Listen, Tim is not scared of heights. He's fallen off buildings. But those times he had a grappling gun, and he believed in his own abilities. He has no control over...this.
They land on the patch of ground right outside the collapsed building. Damian sets him down surprisingly gently, and Tim stumbles a little. Jason supports him a little, staring at the dragon. "Is that..."
"Damian?" Tim finishes the sentence. "I think so."
The dragon snorts again. Then he raises a claw and points towards the metal pipe still sticking out of his wing.
"You want us to take it out?" Dick asks carefully, walking closer. Tim didn't know that it was possible for a dragon to convey the message, Obviously, so obviously without any words or facial expressions, but Damian finds a way. Dick and Steph grab the thin pipe and pull it through the wing.
"He's a shifter?" Jason murmurs, as the dragon shrinks so that now he's about a quarter of Tim's height, a vast difference from his previous towering height.
Tim didn't even know that shifters were real. He's heard the stories, of course - many people believed that Gotham, the cursed city, was home to many of the shifters, despite all Gothamites never having seen one before.
Still, Damian doesn't shift back. He makes a little yip sound, again, much softer. He scuttles over the ground, winding around Dick's legs and up his stomach to rest around his neck. Dick yelps in surprise, and Tim sees a little red spot where Damian - nipped him on the ear.
"You want us to stitch you up?" Steph guesses, and Damian lets out a little puff of smoke - smoke - in agreement.
"How'd you even get that?" Jason asks.
Steph smugly points to Cass.
Batman doesn't seem to have any words, just staring at Damian as Dick stitches up his wing with steady hands, struggling a little with the tough skin and flesh. He switches to a thicker thread, and Damian shrinks even smaller.
When Dick is finished and cuts the string, Damian shifts back, and suddenly he's Robin again. Dusty and bruised but looking perfectly fine.
There's silence for two seconds.
Then Dick says, "Were you ever going to tell us?"
Damian looks away a little. "Yes," he answers.
"Hold on, how the shit are you a shifter?!" Jason interrupts. "Isn't that shit genetic?"
"Yes. Can we continue this conversation at base?" Damian snaps, walking briskly towards the Batmobile. "My stunt was bound to attract attention. One that I do not think any of you are in the right mind to be capable of handling."
They somehow snap out of it. Jason hops onto his motorcycle, Tim, Dick, Cass, Duke, and Steph get the Batmobile 2.0 built for the kids, while Batman gets into the driver's seat of the other Batmobile.
Mostly, Tim's mind is reeling. Damian's a shifter. Not only that, but a dragon shifter, the rarest form. Damian had hidden it from everyone successfully in the six months he's been with them. Damian had let his secret slip to save him. Some part of Tim was grateful for that, maybe a little touched, but the other part of him was trying to piece everything together.
From whatever stories they had read, shifting was genetic. Parent to child. Everyone in the line would be a shifter, no skipping of a generation, no exceptions. Bruce had seemed just as shocked as the rest of them, which meant -
Talia was a shifter?
But that also made no sense. The al Ghuls would have loved to use the shifter position. People had heard all sorts of legends for them, after all - being a shifter would mean that Ra's could take over the whole criminal underworld, which he still had yet to do.
Although, it might be a play on the Demon's Head thing he had going on.
Tim didn't get much time to muse as they pulled into the Batcave. Damian hopped out of the Batmobile and immediately beelined for the exit, stopped by Dick.
"We're checking your...wing," he says firmly. Damian scowls, but acquiesces, grumbling as he makes his way to the table that they usually use for stitching up.
"Shirt off," Bruce says. Damian rolls his eyes, as he sets down the domino, unclapses the cape and pulls the shirt off.
They're used to seeing the scars by now. Even so, Tim flinches away from them a little. They all have their own shares of scars, but Damian is twelve, and his body is almost as marked up as Tim's. Come to think of it, the scar on his stomach looks suspiciously like the one on the underbelly of his dragon form.
"Where do you put your wings?" Bruce asks, still mostly unmoving. Damian tilts his head, closes his eyes, and his wings unfurl from his back. Right, the old myths - shifters could unfurl their wings even in human form. "And how do you hide them?"
Damian turns around so they can see his back as he withdraws his wings, and the red fades into black. A picture-perfect image of his wings tattooed into his skin. Then the wings lift from his skin again, black disappearing, and Damian demonstrates how he drapes his wings over his shoulders, the spread-out picture of his wings curling around his arms in black ink. The tips of his wings reach his wrist.
"I can keep them on my back," he explains, "but I prefer them spread-out. It is more comfortable."
"Is that why you always insist on the long sleeves?" Duke pipes up, frowning. Damian gives a curt nod.
"May I...inspect the wound?" Bruce reaches out to the wings fluttering up from skin. They shy away from his touch, and Bruce withdraws his touch.
Damian spreads them out and nods again. "They will heal soon, as long as I keep them tucked in."
"So...is Talia a shifter?" Tim asks, curiously peering over his shoulder as Bruce prods at the wound, drawing a hiss from Damian.
"Of course not. Mother would use that status to her full advantage," Damian scoffs, jerking his wing back from Bruce and furling them in. He pulls the shirt back over his head. "I did not mean to tell you this way, but I am a demigod."
"A demigod," Jason repeats. "Like Wonder Woman."
Damian quirks an eyebrow. "Did you think that she was special as a demigod? Every one of us can shift. She's simply one of the few with Zeus as a godly parent to shift to an eagle. There used to be much more, until Zeus turned too paranoid."
"And how are you a demigod? Are you not Talia's, then?" Tim butts in.
His lip curls. "Unfortunately, she is still my mother. No, Grandfather simply decided that he would meddle with the gods' blood. I have Athena's and Hephaestus' blood. Once my mother found out, she sent me to the safest place for demigods, which I suppose was something good on her part. Camp Half-Blood. Long Island, New York."
"Isn't that where you wanted to spend your summer?"
"Yes," Damian answers Duke. "For this reason. Monsters hunt demigods. There aren't many ways to kill them. I return every summer to brush up on my fighting skills and resupply my weapons. Shifting draws attention to us. It's dangerous. There, I can shift freely."
Well, that made Tim feel a little less...sad? No. Melancholy, about the fact that Damian didn't tell them.
"I will return tomorrow, over the weekend," he decides, hopping off from the table. "You will accompany me, and I will better explain this."
He leaves before any of them get to say anything.
***
Damian's packing when Tim knocks on his door.
"Yes?" he calls, not looking up as he twirls a few blades - not the normal weapons, but bronze. "Are you packed?"
Tim shifts and rolls his eyes. "I'm not that incompetent."
"Right," Damian says, utterly deadpan and unconvinced. "Seven A.M. Sharp. Set your alarm."
"Okay. Yeah."
When he doesn't leave, Damian raises his eyebrow and turns. "Yes?"
"Thank you," Tim says finally. "For the save."
Damian dismisses him with a wave. "I couldn't let you die. Father would be mad at me, after all."
Tim's great at reading between the lines. The fact that Damian shifted for him, to save him. Yeah. Tim can read between the lines.
He hides a smile behind his palm. "Get some sleep, Damian."
"If there's any mugs of coffee in your room tomorrow, Pennyworth will be after you."
Damian can read between the lines too.
Tim closes the door behind him, hearing the lock click twice, and huffs laughter.
God. Gods, now.
His life was about to get so much more complicated, wasn't it?