Chapter Text
I’m happy that I’ve helped bring your family together.
The sentence echoed in Jason’s head along with the wrongness of that “your”. It was an exclusive word, one that put Jason in and left Tim out. It described a family that Tim didn’t think he belonged into, though the thought of Tim not belonging felt like a hand stroking Jason’s fur in the wrong direction.
Dick could feel it too. The sugar glider had gone tense in between Jason’s hands and poked his head through Jason’s fingers to look at Tim. His small ears flicked back in displeasure, tail twitching erratically against his skin.
But before Jason could correct the kid, Tim was already speaking again, swiftly changing the subject.
“Miss Selina, what do you suggest I do to help gain better control of my shifts now that I’m human?”
Tim purposefully looked away from Jason and Dick, focusing instead on Selina. She also didn’t miss the tense change of subject, and her eyes darted between all the shifters
Her eyes settled on Jason, a question in the gaze, and he gave a tiny shrug.
“Timothy, I think perhaps…”
“Please,” Tim said, cutting her off. Tim was smiling politely, but it was a gala smile, similar to the one Bruce put on when he was uncomfortable, but bearing it.
The woman wavered and eventually, she sighed.
“You’re not going to like what I’m going to say.”
A tiny crack started to splinter through Tim’s smile. “Oh?”
“You should shift into your other form willingly.”
His smile completely fell and Jason could almost hear it shattering on the floor. “What?”
Selina leaned back in her seat and her fingers thrummed on the upholstery. “Remember what I said to you in our first meeting, Timothy. The reason that you get stuck is because you’re trying to force your body into being one, when you’re actually two. Your stubbornness to stay human will inevitably trigger a stuck shift if you do not willingly transfer between your forms.”
Tim was silent staring down at the cup between his hands. Then, he laughed and it was a harsh, ugly sound.
“I just got my thumbs back,” he said and the tone in his voice was bitter. “I should really stop getting used to them so easily.”
“Tim,” Jason cut in before Tim could say something else horrible. “This isn’t a punishment. We also aren’t forcing you to shift back. It’s just something Selina is suggesting.”
“Doesn’t it matter though?” Tim barked back, his eyes narrowed as he stared down into his tea. “My body is eventually going to make the choice for me and we all know which form it’s going to choose.”
He stood, putting the teacup onto the table, and stomped around the small room. “What’s the use trying to get me human if I just need to turn into a linsang again? I spend weeks upon weeks in my furry body, why can’t I get to be human for more than a couple hours!”
Dick jumped from Jason’s hand, landing on the coffee table to eventually hopping onto the floor. If the man was human, Jason was sure that he would be scooping their youngest brother up into a hug.
“Tim, please, sit back down,” Dick pleading, chasing after Tim’s feet and trying to catch the edge of his pant with his tiny sugar glider paws. It would have been funny if Dick didn’t look so genuinely distressed and Tim didn’t look about ten seconds away from kicking Dick like a furry football.
Tim glared down at him. “No.”
“Tim, be reasonable. This isn’t like you!” Dick cried and Jason saw the exact moment that those words landed about as well as a plane doing a crashlanding.
Tim froze, his eyes becoming dangerous, narrow slits and his entire demeanour became frigid.
“It isn’t like me, huh?” Tim repeated, a cold and chilling anger underlying the words. “What isn’t like me Dick? Is it like me to just accept whatever shape I’m in? Is it like me to not get a say in the matter? Is it like me to just be whatever convenient shape pleases everyone else?”
“No!” Dick scrambled, trying to crawl up Tim’s pant leg, but he shook him off. “That isn’t what I mean. I’m just saying that–”
“That I’m not convenient anymore? That I’m not the right shape? Because that’s what everyone thinks isn’t it? I’m never the right shape and I don’t get a say in it,” Tim hissed, physically moving away from Dick and leaving the sugar glider standing in the middle of the living by himself. Jason and Selina were still both sitting silently, letting the scene play out. Tim glared at both of them, his eyes bouncing between them.
“Do you two have something say?” he snapped, body tense like he was expecting to get hit. “Either one of you want to tell me about how I don’t get to be a person for a little while.”
Selina spoke first. She was braver than him.
“You are always a person, Tim,” she said calmly, not rising to the righteous fury of the teenager. “It doesn’t matter whether you are wearing our fur or your skin. You are always a person. I am suggesting what I believe to be the healthiest route for you. It is still your choice to make a decision on whether to heed my advice.”
Tim glared, silent, angry, and frustrated by the facts that were facing him. Jason could see the battle behind his eyes. The parts of him that were at war on whether to calm down and listen or whether to let his anger run its course.
But Jason knew about anger. He knew how to recognize the kind that all-consumed you.
“Fine,” he stated, rearing his head and holding it up high. His chin was up. His body was all tense lines. He surveyed his world with aristocratic regard that Jason recognized from all of Bruce’s charity galas. The expression was all Gotham elite – hard edges, impervious countenance, a shield to cover up what was surely the hurricane of feelings inside.
“I’m leaving,” he said, pacing towards the door and not looking back. Dick tried to follow, but Jason caught him mid-scamper, keeping the sugar glider from rushing out the door with Tim.
“Don’t follow.”
And with that, Tim was gone and the only thing left of him was the even pattern of his steps going down the stairs.
All of them sat in silence until Dick rounded on Jason, squirming in his hands. “Let go! I could have stopped him! I could have kept him from–”
“Don’t blame this on yourself, Dickie,” Jason cut him off, setting him down on a pillow next to him. “Tim’s just frustrated. He needs to blow off some steam. He has every right to be frustrated and we just gotta let him get through that.”
“But we should be there!” Dick shot back, his tail twitching in annoyance and his thin claws pressing into Jason’s pantlegs. “We can’t just let him do this on his own! He needs us.”
“And he won’t,” Jason countered, his voice quiet but firm. “We will go get him, but it’s just right now he doesn’t need us crowding around him while he grapples with the hard truth of his situation. If we tried to keep him here, he would have just felt caged and cornered and I refuse to make him feel like that anymore.”
Jason couldn’t get the image of Tim, curled up and caged in his head. He had been trapped. He had been trapped in many ways and Jason didn’t want to trap him into this too. If Tim wanted to leave to grapple with his own feelings, then Jason would let him do that.
Tim needed to have that choice.
All at once, Dick seemed to come to the same realisation because Dick seemed to deflate, flattening onto his pillow. He became a small ball, staring at the door like he could bring Tim back through his gaze alone.
“I just hate the thought of him being alone and hurt out there. Especially because… especially because if his emotions are so volatile and he’s as prone to stuck shifts as you say he is… it’s just a ticking time bomb until his own body forces the shift.”
Jason sighed, and shifted himself, letting his fur come back and his spine lengthen. The world warped around him and he found himself on the same pillow as Dick, able to curl around his sugar glider brother. Dick instinctively seemed to relax back into Jason’s fur, sinking into his much thicker coat.
“I know, which is why we will go get him in a bit. He won’t stray far. He just needs some time.”
Dick didn’t answer, but he did nestle in closer and they both sat together to wait out Tim’s anger.
*****
What did Selina know? Tim growled to himself, kicking at a random empty bottle. The bottle made a satisfying thump against the alley’s brick wall, but it did little to quell Tim’s fury.
He was so done.
He was done with being a shifter.
He was done with have a stupid animal twisting inside him, trying to push out of him even now.
He was done with being small and pathetic and unable to open doors by him-fuckin’-self.
He wanted his thumbs. His over five feet of height. His… he wanted his human body without constantly being asked to give it away.
He just wanted… he wanted…
His stomach burned and suddenly he felt like he was going to throw up. He made a whiny, hurt sound in the back of his throat, wiping away the tears that prickled at the corners of his eyes. His back hit the alleyway wall and he slid down it, rough brick scraping at the bottom of his spine.
He landed on the ground with a quiet thump and he couldn’t hold the tears back.
He started crying in that alley.
Tears came and he couldn’t keep them back. The anger he had felt earlier had hardened into something more bitter.
God, he was pathetic.
He had a tantrum in front of his allies and now he was sitting in an alleyway crying about it.
He wasn’t even surprised when he felt his body twinge, his limbs shake, and his form to give way to fur and paws.
He sighed and curled his tail around his feet.
Now he was just a rat sitting in an alleyway.
He sighed again, rising to feet and staring out at the busy street passing in front of him. People and animal feet were passing in front of him and they all bustled by in a Gotham rush. The streets were intimidating to a human but as a small animal with less than a foot of height, the street looked like a sea of ever-moving legs.
Damn, he really should have pulled his phone out of his pocket and kept it from shifting with the rest of his clothes.
“Hello, dear,” said a warm voice from his side. When he looked up, he saw a woman had stopped near him, her hand clasped together with a little girl who was probably her daughter. “I’m sorry to bother you, but I noticed that you looked a bit lost. Would you like us to call someone for you?”
Maybe he wasn’t so lucky after all.
*****
Out of all the ways that Jason thought Tim was going to contact him for a pick-up, being called by a nice sounding lady about his ‘little lost weasel brother’ wasn’t towards the top of the list.
“Your brother is here with my daughter,” said the woman, guiding him through her quaint Gotham apartment. “She’s not a shifter herself, but she loves animals and was really good with him. I said he didn’t mind, and Lexi can be rather enthusiastic about meeting shifter friends.”
They came to a door that bore the name “Lexi” in glitter glue and construction paper. The sheer amount of sparkles that the little girl had managed to put on the paper got a smile out of Jason.
The woman opened the door and revealed an obnoxiously pink room with a princess-styled everything. Clothes, baby dolls, and books were strewn everywhere and it was the type of complete, joyful chaos that only kids managed to produce.
In the middle of the chaos, with a plastic crown on his perched precariously on his forehead, was Tim.
The linsang was effectively trapped because he had been placed on a purple kiddie chair and was wearing what probably was a doll’s full-length princess dress. His back paws had even managed to be forced into a tiny, rubber pair of shoes. The girl was holding one of his small paws, her face fixed into fierce concentration so his claws could be painted bright pink.
“Lexi,” he said his voice in a forced politeness. “This really isn’t necessary. It’s a pretty colour but–”
“Shh, you’re distracting me,” the girl commanded, even sterner than Batman. Tim gave up immediately with a resigned sigh.
On Jason’s shoulder, Dick snickered and Jason couldn’t help but chuckle himself.
Both the girl and the linsang’s heads whipped up to look at him.
“Jason!” Tim sighed in relief as the girl got a look of absolute joy on his face.
“Squirrely!”
She immediately abandoned the linsang in favour of running towards Jason to look at the latest animal companion. Dick had stopped snickering and instead was curiously tilting his head at the girl, whiskers twitching. “Can I hold her?”
Jason laughed, leaning down and holding out a hand in case Dick wanted to get closer. “I’m sorry, you can’t because Mr. Squirrel is hurt, but I’m sure he would let you pet him.”
“Yes,” Dick chirped happily. “Mr. Squirrel would love to get some nice head pets.”
Dick, always eager to interact with kids, did climb down Jason’s arm and eagerly received the little girl’s careful scratches behind his ear.
“Jason,” Tim’s voice came, hushed and urgent. He looked over to the linsang, still balanced on the plastic kiddie chair. The linsang very obviously mouthed ‘please help me’ while trying to figure out a way to jump down while wearing a dress.
Jason smiled and Tim’s expression went horrified.
“Lexi,” he practically sang. “I think Miss Weasel over there is starting to feel sad that her manicure isn’t being finished.”
The little girl was like a shark that smelled blood. She whipped around and Tim froze caught in the act of trying to escape. If he had been human, his face would have paled in dread.
“Princess Kitty-Kat! You cannot be moving around while your nails are still wet!”
The girl rushed over, rearranging Tim back onto the chair while Tim snuck in absolutely venomous looks towards Jason and Dick. Jason had a feeling neither of them looked very sympathetic to his plight.
Jason loped into the room and sat cross-legged next to Tim in his chair as Lexi took his paw to finish up painting his nails. Tim was grumpy but resigned to his fate as his feet became bright pink.
“So how’s Princess Kitty-Kat been for you, Lexi?” Jason asked, definitely getting way too much enjoyment out of this situation.
“He’s been really good! He was sad at first, though, because he didn’t know how he was going to get back to his family, but Momma said she would call you and you guys came! He was sad because he wasn’t sure you were going to come.”
Suddenly, instead of resigned, Tim looked more uneasy, actively avoiding Jason and Dick’s gazes.
“Of course, we would come. Family doesn’t leave family behind.”
“That’s what Momma says too, but Princess Kitty-Kat didn’t seem to believe us,” the little girl remarks, just as she finished up Tim’s last fingernail.
“Perfect! I just need to go get the special drying spray from Momma!”
The girl leveraged herself off the chair and in a second, she dashed out the door yelling for her mom and leaving the three brothers by themselves.
“So…” Jason started with Tim didn’t speak up. “Princess Kitty-Kat, huh?”
Tim barked a half-chuckle.
“I told her my name was Tim and that I was a linsang but… Princess Kitty-Kat is more fitting apparently.”
“Well, I’ll say,” Jason snorted, poking the crown on Tim’s head. He crossed his eyes trying to follow Jason’s finger and the tiny motion was more endearing then it should have the right to be. Gently, Jason reached forward and removed the crown clipped to Tim’s fur. “What’s all this about you not believing that we would come to find you?”
“I yelled at you,” Tim admitted. “I told you not to look for me and I was afraid… I was sure that you were going to take that as permission to leave me to your own devices.”
Jason smiled ruffling through Tim’s fur and getting a little giggle out of the cat-weasel. “I promise you, Timmy, by the time I get through with you you’re never going to forget that family doesn’t leave family hurt and anxious and thinking that they are abandoned. That’s just being shitty.”