Chapter Text
The case was closed, not in the dark halls of the Batcave, but in a family court. With no close relatives to speak of, Timothy Drake would hence be known as Timothy Drake-Wayne, and he would live with Bruce Wayne.
In reality, nothing really had changed except on paper, but that little signature and document felt like the end of an era. Now came for the task of moving all his worldly possessions from the cold halls of his old home to his new one, overflowing with water and life and laughter.
It was on one of these trips that Danny had insisted on accompanying him. He trailed after Tim like a lost puppy and nipped at his trousers, chirping and cheeping in that pleading tone, begging for Tim to take him.
“Jay said I lived there as an egg. I wanna see, I wanna see!”
Tim let out a long, but fond sigh and looked down at the toddler. “There’s really nothing to see. All just boring, dusty junk my parents used to keep.”
“But Timmy never brings Danny over. I wanna seeeee. Just for a bit?”
After several more minutes of negotiation, Tim’s resistance wore down, and he reluctantly allowed Danny to climb onto his shoulders and join to Drake Manor. Alfred had offered to take them, but Tim had opted to walk instead.
It would give him more time before the inevitable.
Danny sang and wiggled his legs all throughout the mile-long walk to Drake Manor. When most of the building came into view, he began to bounce in excitement.
He stepped into the hallways with trepidation on his breath. It had only been a few days since last he walked within these walls. Surely they hadn’t always been this dusty, and the lights this dim. It was only the middle of the afternoon, and the sun was streaming through each window as always, yet the glass clouded the light and turned it grey.
“Did you make a wrong turn?” Danny whispered. “I think you made a wrong turn.”
A weight held his voice down until it was barely audible. “This is it. Welcome to Casa de Drake. Population: None.”
Danny’s whine carried an upset undertone. “Doesn’t smell like you. Scary.”
Tim startled. Danny seemed to have had enough uppy time and wiggled to signal his discomfort. As Tim bent down to let Danny stumble off of his back, he locked eyes with the toddler. “What do you mean it doesn’t smell like me?”
“Home smells like Jason, and Bruce and Dickie and Alfie and Ace and me and you. It smells like everyone! But there’s no smell here. All dusty. Dun like.”
Tim’s throat clenched. “Yeah. I don’t like it either. Told you it would be boring.”
He took Danny’s hand and walked him through the Manor, keeping a firm (though not painful) grip. Even when he’d just hatched and Danny was restricted to chubby, flabby arms and no legs to speak of, he’d still climb out of the water to chase after him and Jason, sometimes managing whole metres at a time despite being the size of an apple.
Yeah, no way Tim was going to be letting him out of his sight. He took Danny on a short tour of the Manor, passing through spotlessly maintained artifact rooms and display cases, past the neglected ballrooms at the back, and briskly skipping his dad’s study.
This last locale was where the problems started. Danny whined and pointed to the doors, looking up pleadingly at him. Tim just shook his head. “We can’t go in there, Danny. That’s just my dad’s office. No toys in there.”
Danny whined again and chirped pleadingly. “But, but…”
“No buts. Come on, we’ll be late for lunch at this rate.” To cease with any more arguments, Tim scooped Danny up by the legs and tickled him in the belly for good measure, and the ensuing laughter cut off any protests.
At last they arrived at Tim’s room, filled wall to wall with newspaper clippings, photos and posters, all things to occupy a friendless boy. In the corner had been shoved a small glass tank, the first attempt by him and Jason to raise the lonely eggs they’d found on the beach.
So overwhelmed with memories was Tim that he hadn’t noticed his slackened grip, and he certainly didn’t notice the quiet until it had become a little too quiet.
He snapped himself out of the stupor of nostalgia to find a suspiciously Danny-shaped empty space by his side. He whipped his head back and forth in the hallway, only to find nothing. “Danny!” he cried out. “I told you to stick with me!”
No reply. He glanced at the carpet. Near the corner the impressions of a tiny footstep had barely faded. He leapt into a sprint. Armour and weapons displays, delicate vases and busts. No good could come from a toddler wandering around unattended. Tim threw himself around the corner and dashed down the hallway until he noticed the door to his parents’ study, left ever so slightly ajar. From within the room he heard the sound of things being moved around.
“Danny!” Tim poked his head into the study. “What are you doing? You really cared me there, guppy. It’s not safe to wander around in here. You could’ve been hurt.”
Danny ignored him in favour of pawing at the huge wooden closet in the back of the room. “Timmy, help! It’s too heavy!”
“Help you with what? Danny, let’s just leave my parents’ stuff alone. There’s nothing here. Come on, I’ll show you some of my cool toys. I- I can teach you to skateboard!”
Danny shook his head vigorously. “There’s something! We gotta find it!”
“It’s probably just paperwork.”
Danny stomped his foot. “No! It smells like home! It smells like home and it’s here! It smells like you.”
That got Tim’s attention. He surreptitiously cast a glance behind himself for parents who would never come again. “Fine, but just this once. Then we’re going straight to my room, got it?”
Danny nodded and stepped aside. Tim stood at his full height and pulled the doors open, revealing safes, lockboxes and stacks upon stacks of paperwork, just like he’d predicted.
A sharp trill sent him on edge. “There, there!” Danny cried. He pointed at the bottom-most lock box, the oldest and dustiest by far. “It’s there! It’s there!”
It took a small amount of effort to remove the items stacked on top, and he felt a little bad about picking the lock in front of Danny, but at this point his own curiosity was too strong to ignore. One last twist of his lockpick sent the lockbox jolting open.
Tim pushed his frantic theories about its contents to the wayside and pushed it open, revealing a faded gray cloth folded up inside.
“That’s it?” he asked in befuddlement. That was what Danny had gotten all worked up about? Just a shabby old blanket? It looked matted and dirty, like it hadn’t been touched in years. “It’s just a blanket. Probably one of my old baby blankets,” he muttered. “Let’s get going. I don’t wanna stay here much longer.”
Danny’s face scrunched up and he pouted furiously. “No! Can’t!”
The outburst just wore him out even more he already had been. As he sighed he mentally compiled his latest talking points to get Danny to see reason.
He’d barely made it to his fourth bullet point when hands gripped his side, and the searing warmth of touch seeped through his hoodie. “Youch! Danny! What was that?”
But when he looked down, Danny was nowhere near him. Instead he’d shoved his head into the box, the ratty blanket gripped in between his hands. “What’s wrong Timmy?” he said in confusion.
Tim blinked rapidly, as if his eyes, ears and skin were betraying him. He swirled around, but they were the only souls in the entire building, let alone the study, and that sensation was right at his sides, which were a little too tall for Danny to reach up and pinch even if he wanted to.
“Timmy? Timmmyyy,” Danny cheeped as the gears whirring in his head drowned out any noise, and he remained only faintly aware of the siren toddler grumpily marching forward, displeased at having been ignored. It wasn’t until Danny was swinging the fabric back and forth in his hand that Tim realised something.
And he realised it because at that exact same time he felt a violent breeze whip across his skin in one direction, then back in the other direction. The wind scraped across his skin, not his clothes, which remained perfectly still. It ignored Danny, the box and every loose paper and ornament in the study. Tim would’ve thought himself mad if his hair hadn’t visibly whipped to the side in response to Danny waving the blanket in front of his face, repeatedly droning out his name.
“Danny, can you hand me that blanket please?”
Danny beamed and happily forked the item over. Tim crouched and took it into his hands.
As his fingers brushed against the soft fuzz, a jolt shot through his nerves. He sucked in a tight breath as every hair on his body stood on end and his skin thrummed with a sensitive exposure, like he was naked, lacking in something he couldn’t understand.
But his hand? The one swamped in that comfortable, warm cloth felt right, more right than he’d ever felt in his entire life. It felt like the hug he could never again get from his mother, the cozy warmth his house could never provide, the belonging his younger self could only dream of. The cloth seemingly fit his hand like a glove, a second skin that should never have been removed. Impossibly comfortable, impossibly snug, it conformed to even the subtlest crease in his palm and mimicked perfectly every bend and curve of his fingers, down to the fingerprints.
It was as if his hand had been painted white and gray. He flexed his palm. At no point did the fabric bunch up, get caught or stretch where his skin wouldn’t. When he ran his fingers against his white-coated palm and marvelled over the faint grey spots that broke up the plain white colour, he felt every touch as if it was bare skin.
“Cool…” Danny muttered slack-jawed. Tim hardly noticed him.
“This… this is freaky. We should just g-go back,” Tim muttered. “I need- I need some time.”
He moved for the exit, his other hand already tugging the strange shape-changing fabric off. It figured that among his parents’ possessions they’d have a weird form-fitting glove amongst them. However, when his bare fingers pinched at the fabric of his gloved hand, he instead gasped as sharp pain stung him, like it was his own skin being pinched and not the fabric.
His heartbeat jumped in pace. He tugged at the glove again. It would not come off. In fact, the seam between skin and fur was beginning to blur into non-existence, as if his hand was the glove. No matter how much he pinched and pulled, it refused to budge an inch, and the pain mounted, like he was trying to remove his own skin. It grew and grew until it began to leak out of his body in sharp grunts and stinging tears. Danny chittered nervously. “Timmy, are you ok? What’s happening?”
“I- I don’t know. It’s fine. We’ll be fine. I’ll be fine. It’s just some random artifact. Nothing to be worried about.”
Tim was lying, and Danny could tell, judging by how unassured he looked. Tim’s efforts to remove the cursed glove continued to be fruitless. In fact, the grip that the thing had on his body was only increasing. Animated with malicious purpose, the fabric moved on its own and wrapped itself down his wrist and up his elbow and arm. Melding – conquering his pale skin like an infection. His vision blurred with unending tears as the cursed cloth continued its way up his arm. When it reached the sleeve of his hoodie, Tim prayed that it would halt upon meeting another fabric. It did not. Instead spread faster. The red cotton of his favourite hoodie tore seam by seam as it succumbed to the assault of the gray fibre.
His legs felt weak. He fell to the floor, fruitlessly clawing at the curse. Instead. The sheet of grey assaulted his other arm and pinned it to his side like a straightjacket all the while it consumed his hoodie. The cloth squeezed his waist until it he was choking for air as Danny screamed his name. The toddler approached him but Tim held his hand up, trapped in a liminal state of human skin and something other.
“Stay away! You might get hurt!” But his throat ached with each word. His voice cracked and stuttered at the lower vowels and some consonants failed entirely. Tim curled in on himself. He bit his tongue and choked down the agony that threatened to spill forth and terrorise the little ears in the room. Get Dick. Get Jay. Get Bruce. His tongue refused to cooperate. The grey infection continued down his waist and Tim heart the sound of more shredded fabric. Another contingent spread upward, consuming his neck and sealing his mouth shut. Then his nose. He couldn’t breathe.
The last thing he saw was Danny shaking him repeatedly, crying amidst scraps of denim, cotton and torn skin. The grey cloth sealed his eyes into utter darkness, and then his ears.