Chapter Text
It’s the rising sun that wakes Tim from his slumber, the softly shifting hues of true darkness fading into soft grays and pastels as the luminous orb peeks over the horizon. He sleeps with his curtains open and at this time of year, the window too so that the night air cools down the wretchedly warm interior of the sprawling ranch house. Late summer has finally reached the Sanctuary, bringing with it a reminder that he still hasn’t repaired the air conditioning unit that broke last month.
He should really get to that before his mom arrives. Used to the comforts of the city as she is, he doubts she’ll appreciate just a ceiling fan moving the warm air around.
The repairs get moved higher up his never-ending to-do list.
Tim stretches and yawns widely, revealing sharper than usual teeth for the average human. His friend Kon likes to joke he’s part vampire on the rare occasions they meet up these days. The joke has been ongoing since college.
His stomach rumbles and from the foot of the bed, Ace, his Rottweiler, raises his big head.
“Don’t worry, boy. I’ll feed you soon too.”
In these early hours of the day, Tim enjoys taking his time to wake up, slowly sipping at his coffee out on the front deck while Ace roots around the yard sniffing out the various critters that crossed it during the night.
It’s nice. It’s peaceful. And most importantly, it’s quiet.
Three years he’s been out here now, far away from his old life back in Gotham with his mother. He’d grown up with a sensitivity to sound, one so pronounced that once it was officially diagnosed, he went through his day to day routine with white-noise headphones practically glued to his head after his audio integration training AIT sessions failed. His mother wasn’t happy about it, not that she ever said anything directly to him. But for a woman who strived for perfection in everything, the fact her son wasn’t quite perfect had to be irksome.
Their relationship is much better now that Tim’s way out here, alone except for Ace and the dragons.
Not for the first time, Tim sends a brief prayer of thanksgiving to Bruce Wayne for giving him this opportunity. A random conversation with his son Damian during one of the rare social events he attended (an evening garden party of all things) and a few days later, he was invited back to Wayne Manor for a discussion that changed his life for the better.
Tim is pretty sure the fresh air and sunshine has helped loads too. Reclusive doesn’t even begin to describe his previous life, even after college. His small talent for magic ensured he went to the right school, not that his abilities impressed his mother much. She wanted him to go to MIT or CalTech, not some mage school out in the middle of nowhere.
He’s still glad he put his foot down on that one. It’s served him well here on the Sanctuary, even if he still can’t get those blasted shackles off Jason’s legs.
The sound of a phone pierces the still morning air, the ring tone telling him right away who’s calling this early.
Hauling himself to his feet, Tim heads back inside and unplugs his cell phone from the charger in the kitchen. It’s days like this that he curses the cell tower Bruce made sure was here so that the outside world can contact him.
He’s turning into such a hick. Kon would be proud.
“Morning, Mom,” Tim answers just before the call goes to voicemail. “You do know what time it is, right?”
“You’re up with the dawn. I made sure to check what time that was beforehand, dear,” Janet says with a light laugh. Someone must have already had her happy juice or whatever she’s calling her newest cleanse these days.
“Still doesn’t mean I’ve finished my first cup of coffee yet.” Tim heads back outside to his abandoned cup and sits down on the porch swing. The boards creak softly in protest.
“You really should cut back on that stuff. It always makes you so jittery.”
“That was when I was sixteen and trying to test out of high school.”
“My how time flies, doesn’t it?” Tim can just picture the absent smile on his mom’s face. She sounds distracted. Probably getting in her premarket trades for the day. That’s what he always remembered her doing whenever he had to get up early or went to bed late.
“Almost ten years.” He waits and takes another sip of his coffee. Eventually, the point of this call will be revealed.
“I’m thinking about rescheduling my trip to come see you. I got a call from Professor Johnston yesterday, you remember him, don’t you? Used to work with your father on that dig down in the Yucatán.”
Tim doesn’t but he knows better than to admit it. Already, he can see where this story is going and moves fixing the air conditioner back down his list.
“... So I decided to take this opportunity and get back into some field work. I leave in two weeks, which would cut our visit short.”
“That’s great, Mom. It’ll be nice for you to get out of that office for a change. When was the last time you really left Gotham?” Tim knows the words she wants to hear. The words that make her happy with her decision, words that put off yet another trip out here to visit him. He hasn’t seen his mom in two years.
The rest of the conversation doesn’t really register, but Tim makes the appropriate sounds in the right places. By the time he hangs up, he’s ready to crawl back into bed.
Sighing, he looks down at Ace who’s taken cover under the swing, nervous over the invisible voice he can’t see. Video chats he’s fine with, the silly mutt. “Guess you won’t be meeting Mom anytime soon, boy.”
The dog snuffs at his hand and emerges.
“That’s okay. Bart will be here next month for a couple weeks. You’ll love him. It’s hard to say which is faster, his feet or his mouth.”
With that, Tim finishes his coffee and heads back inside to make breakfast. As he gets ready for his day, he shoves aside thoughts of his mom and focuses on what he really needs to.
The plasma cutter arrived yesterday in his supply delivery from Bruce and he’d spent the evening practicing on some stray bits of metal in the barn to get a feel for the device. His new portable batteries spent the night charging and he already loaded the heavy fire blanket and protective gear he needs to wear in the back of his truck.
It all depends now on whether Jason will even let him get close enough to try. Steph told him that the big black dragon is on board, but he’s an ornery bastard and refuses to speak directly with Tim on general principle because he’s human. Not that he can blame the dragon for this, considering the abuse he experienced before being rescued by Diana herself.
Cass has told him privately that Jason waxes poetic about the dragon ambassador to the human world. Tim’s met her several times, so he completely understands.
The last time he saw her, she brought Jason with her, freshly rescued from an underground fighting arena where he’d been a slave for a few decades. There was so much blood and Tim still isn’t entirely sure if he managed to save that eye. Thanks to those damned shackles Jason still wears that absorb all forms of magic, the great black dragon is unable to tap into his own innate abilities, access his fire, or even fly, not that the absolute wreck of his left wing would be capable of that even if his magic is restored, but that’s beside the point.
The plasma cutter has to work. It just has to. Magic has failed so it’s time for an utterly human approach, one that’s based on science and technology. The question is, will the plasma itself be hot enough to damage even dragon scales? According to his studies, nothing flammable penetrates dragon hide due to their inherent magical nature. But with Jason’s magic sealed away, who knows what will happen?
“I’ll find out soon enough, boy,” Tim says as he opens the door to his truck for Ace to jump in. The dog does so less than gracefully, as usual, nails scraping against the side of the cab.
Climbing in after him, the engine rumbles to life and they’re on their way to the roost.
The sun hasn’t yet cleared the top of the bluff when Jason hears the distant creak and groan of a truck. It’s a familiar enough now that it doesn’t send a shiver down his spine. He has no reason to like humans, not after what they did to him. Years of pain and torture can’t be made up for by the attentions of a single representative of the race.
Still, he will privately admit to himself this one doesn’t seem so bad. Steph and Cass, the two females who currently make the rather aptly named Sanctuary their home, have both told him they suspect there’s dragon blood in their caretaker’s veins, that this is why Tim is so easy to feel comfortable around.
Jason doesn’t want to believe it. That means a dragon bound their soul to a human and was able to take their form through the power of their souls becoming one. Dragon lore is full of stories about the fabled soul bond. They’re the only race that can bond in such a way with others, dragon or otherwise. He can accept that it happens with other magical, sentient races, like the gryphons or the mers under the sea. But humans?
It makes him sick to his stomach.
He huffs a sigh and shifts uncomfortably on the high perch he’s claimed for his own, basking in the early morning rays of sunlight. The rocky shelf overlooks the narrow valley, dense forest of vibrant green shielding the winding stream from view. This tapers away into rolling grasslands that are only broken by another shallow valley in the distance that shelters more woodlands. After the chaos of the fighting pits, the calm serenity is soothing on his raw nerves.
If it weren’t for the presence of the human, he would have no problem making this beautiful place his home. At least the human is somewhat useful, his healing magic having managed to mostly save the vision in his damaged eye.
It still doesn’t stop Jason from occasionally entertaining the thought of eating him.
Down below, the truck comes to a stop in front of the caves the females have claimed for their own. Cass hides in the shadows, on purpose or accident, he can’t decide. Her eyes no longer see the way his or Steph’s do, so some of her actions are difficult for him to understand. He can’t believe she trusts the human to come anywhere close to her after her own experiences, but her scent is always calm when Tim is around.
Steph’s too, which is insane considering she’s got a little one running wild. Her offspring is barely out of the egg and already she’s leaving her with Tim and his dog when she wants to hunt or take Cass flying.
Who leaves their hatchling with a human?
Jason snorts again, and glares as the kit rushes out of the roost and tackles the black and brown dog. One day, she’s going to eat him, he’s sure of it. Maybe that will be the day he eats the human too. Then there will be peace and quiet all around.
“Someone’s in a sour mood.” Stephanie gracefully lands beside him, her purple hide shimmering in the golden sunlight. She drops the haunch of an antelope to the side, for him or her kit, he doesn’t know. Most of the fresh meat in the roost is provided by her, the only of them who can properly use all her senses when she swoops down from above for the kill. “I can scent your displeasure from a mile up.”
“I have to interact with the human today. How else am I supposed to feel?”
Steph tosses her head and laughs, a quick burst of flame lighting up the air. “If what Tim has planned works, maybe you’ll start using his name. Or even speaking to him.”
Jason stares longingly at the faint smoke left behind. His fire has been dampened for a few decades thanks to the shackles and chains that kept him a slave to the Black Mask. The same shackles that are still clamped around his limbs, the ones that burn in his nightmares as everything he ever knew was stripped away from him, leaving only pain. So much pain. “Nothing else has worked, so why should this? A human tool against magic? He should just give up and call Diana. Maybe the mages of Themyscira can figure the damned spells out.”
The baleful look Steph gives him would make a weaker beast quake. Jason doesn’t back down. He’s mastered his own version, the only form of defiance he had against his captors. Until Diana arrived in all her blue and gold glory, freeing him. He can still feel Sionis’s blood soaking his claws when he ripped him to shreds.
“Tim is much more resourceful than you’re giving him credit for. He’s helped Cass, he’s helped me, he can help you. Just give him a chance.”
“If you’re worried I’ll try to kill him if this machine of his doesn’t work, then don’t be.” Jason huffs, the complete lack of even a hint of flame reminding him just how broken he is. Fuck, if he can just get his flame back, he can deal with never flying again. With the condition his wing is in after the battle to free him and the other magical creatures Black Mask kept captive, he’ll be surprised if he will ever have the strength to take flight, even with his magic to boost him and provide lift. Not with his bulk. Who’d have thought that even in captivity, he’d grow to this size?
“I’m not,” Steph snorts. “Cass and I won’t let you and I can already tell you’d sooner die than disappoint Kit. She adores Tim.”
This is true but he refuses to acknowledge it. The little dragon managed to worm her way into the remnants of his heart within hours of his arrival. He’d shred his own wings first before causing her pain, just as he’d gleefully shred the human who forced Stephanie into the breeding program that resulted in the hatchling.
Not that he ever plans to tell his companion that either. Her pain and his pain are on drastically different levels and he would never presume to understand what she went through. The fact that she’s come out the back end of it with such positivity is something he still can’t wrap his head around. “Whatever, let’s get this over with so I can laugh when it fails.”
Steph brushes against his shoulder as she picks up the haunch in her taloned feet. “If this works, you’ll start speaking directly to Tim. In his language. No more speaking only Draconic to me and Cass to ignore him.”
Jason glares. He’s spoken nothing but human languages for years. To speak his own after three decades of slavery? That’s something he won’t take for granted ever again.
“No promises.”
Tim watches Kit and Ace chase each other around upon his arrival to the roost. The newborn dragon is only a few months out of her egg and is about the same size as his dog, so it’s unsurprising they’re playmates. Her opalescent skin shimmers with its own inner light here in the shadows of the bluff, picking up one color, then another, flashing through all the colors of the rainbow and then some. From his studies, in addition to what Stephanie and Cass have told him about young dragons, this particular trait is drastically muted in times of danger. It makes him happy that he’s never seen Kit bathed in anything but color.
Glancing up to the top of the cliff-face, Tim takes in the sight of the purple dragon that has become such a close friend. Steph won’t be going anywhere for years, not until Kit goes through her first molt, and that’s fine with him. He notices that Jason is up there with her, glaring down at him.
“Sometimes, it’s so tempting to flip him off,” he mutters to Cass.
The other black dragon in his care huffs in what is a delicate laugh for her race. “If your plan works today, it will do wonders in changing his attitude toward you.”
“Me in general or humans as a whole?”
“You in general. Let’s not get too far ahead of ourselves.” Cass’s maw pulls back in a grin, flashing wickedly sharp teeth that are as white as her sightless eyes. “I think we are all curious to see what happens.”
“You and me both.”
Tim runs a hand under her chin, scratching there briefly much like he would a cat, and smiles as she starts purring. His smaller black dragon is extremely tactile and uses all of her mighty senses to make up for the vision she no longer has. The story behind how she lost her sight is one he doesn’t know all the details of, but what they have accomplished since her arrival here at Sanctuary two years ago is nothing short of miraculous.
Cass may not be able to see in the traditional sense, but between his healing magics and her own not inconsiderable talent, she can now see auras, that mystical energy connecting all living things. Thanks to this newfound confidence, she’s been able to take to the skies again, using Stephanie as a guide.
From high above, the vibrantly colored female glides down with spread wings to land gracefully several meters from where her daughter is playing. There’s a haunch of meat in her grip, which Kit spots right away and abandons Ace for without a second thought, immediately engaging her mother in a game of tug o’ war over her morning meal.
Looking up again, Tim catches Jason’s tail lashing out over the top of the cliff as he takes the slower route down.
“He is proud,” Cass announces, her gaze up on the cliffs as well. “But not unreasonable. If he were a complete jackass, do you think Stephanie would let him anywhere near Kit?”
Tim laughs quietly and shakes his head. He’s seen Kit curled up fast asleep between Jason’s forelegs, the larger male seemingly bewildered by this turn of events while at the same time not daring to move because he doesn’t want to wake her up. That was a day Tim wished he’d had a camera handy.
Jason appears from around the edge of the bluff, a challenge in each and every step he takes. He’s humoring Tim and is making sure he knows it.
Sighing, Tim heads toward the back of his truck to unload his equipment. The motto of his favorite television show might be failure is always an option , but today, failure is anything but.
The sun has fully cleared the top of the bluff by the time he has the portable batteries, the plasma cutter, and his safety gear ready. With a little coaxing, Jason is directed to lay down on a wide stretch of sandstone outside the roost to help cut down the risk of a stray spark igniting a wildfire. That’s the last thing Tim needs to deal with, even though those are very real concerns anytime a dragon is around.
He hopes Jason doesn’t start one out of spite.
Tim kneels on the fire blanket he laid out over the rock and inspects the shackle magically sealed around the black dragon’s foreleg. The flat gray steel doesn’t look like much, but from what he’s learned of these, the inscriptions on the inside press against the skin beneath, forcing the binding spells to stay in place. It takes an incredible amount of power to fuel such spells and for these to have been on for as long as they have, Jason must be quite the mage.
Or has the potential to be one. Diana had said he was captured young, probably not long after his second molt.
“Are you ready?” Tim asks, directing the question to Jason despite knowing he won’t answer it.
He’s ignored, but with Cass and Steph stretched out alongside him, he still gets an answer.
“Almost,” Cass replies. “The barrier is… finicky.”
No one is sure how resistant Jason is to heat and fire with his magic sealed away, so the females are attempting to create a thin barrier between the shackle and the skin beneath. From the frustrated sounds occurring in Draconic, it doesn’t sound like it’s going well. Cass is currently the strongest mage present while Steph has admitted to barely having enough innate talent to get herself off the ground and to breathe fire. Kit is far too young for any of her magics to manifest yet.
Jason finally growls out something and the bickering subsides. A brief exchange follows that results in a staring match between Steph and Jason. Tim tries not to laugh. They’re both so strong willed, he has a hard time seeing either one backing down soon.
“You’re both acting like hatchlings,” Cass announces in a tongue Tim can understand and turns to him. “The barrier isn’t working, but Jason says to go ahead regardless.”
“Is that actually what he said or are you being polite?” Tim asks, lowering his face shield.
Jason growls and twitches his foreleg impatiently.
“It loses meaning in translation,” Cass states blandly, which has Steph snorting in laughter.
The look Jason shoots them both tells Tim all he needs to know. “Don’t worry about them, Jason. They like to gang up on me too.”
With that, he depresses the switch and the plasma cutter comes to life, spitting sparks and heat, and surprisingly little noise. There are two places on the shackles that he has identified as weak points and he goes after the lock first. With the lock gone, the hinged metal should swing open, allowing Jason to free himself.
The lock is thick, thicker than anything he practiced on the night before, and takes more time than he would like. Metal glows brightly under his hands and it pains Tim to think that he’s causing more hurt to the incredible beast he has sworn to help, but Jason doesn’t move. Not a twitch, not a word or pained breath.
Even he has to see that it’s working.
Under his mask, Tim grins as he keeps his hand steady. The temptation to move the cutter back and forth faster grows, but he taps it down. Just like with the tortoise and the hare, slow and steady will win this race.
After ten agonizing minutes, the lock falls off and the shackle falls open.
No one breathes as Jason slowly, carefully, raises his leg. Tim sets aside the cutter and hurls the remains of the shackle off to the side.
The freshly revealed skin is pale and gray, withered, sickly. It’s also burned on one side where the sparks and heat from the plasma cutter seared into the flesh. That answers one question… Jason felt every single agonizing moment as the shackle was cut away.
Tim sucks in a deep breath and raises the face shield. “Jason, I am so sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you.”
Jason shifts around and brings his other foreleg to rest on the fire blanket, teal gaze intent and burning hotter than the plasma cutter in Tim’s hand. “Don’t stop,” he growls, his words as clear as day. “Don’t you dare stop now.”
The pain is excruciating. There isn’t any other way Jason can describe it. The searing heat from the melting metal, the sparks that splatter against his skin, he never quite understood how much his magic protected him from fire until it was stripped away from him.
But unlike other forms of pain he’s known, this pain carries with it the promise of freedom.
He can bear it. For this chance, this golden opportunity, he will take whatever is thrown at him and endure because each agonizing second is one second closer to when he will be free of these chains.
He’ll even call the human by name and speak to him.
Free of three shackles with the fourth more than halfway done, Jason already feels different. Lighter. Brighter even, if that makes any sense. Which he bets it would to anyone who has even an iota of magical talent. More importantly though, deep in his gullet, the fires that have been extinguished for so long are starting to burn again.
Almost there. He can stand it for just a little longer. Almost there…
The last lock falls to the ground and Jason kicks out hard with his hind leg, flinging the last shackle off and sending it flying over the edge of the cliff and into the narrow canyon below.
Like a river breaching its banks, his magic floods through him, racing along every nerve and firing senses that have long since been dulled.
Jason is pulled along with it, welcoming the raw power welling up from inside of him. Rising from the ground, he rears back and roars at the sky. Distantly, he hears Cass and Stephanie, and even the little kitten, roaring with him. His happiness, his freedom, this victory is theirs to share. Heat simmers low in his throat and he does it again, flames erupting forth and igniting the sky.
The human did it. He returned his fire to him.
For that, he will finally acknowledge him. The females were right, it truly is safe to trust in this man. This human who clearly has no idea what’s in his bloodline. Settling back onto all fours, he ignores the burning pain stabbing at his limbs. Those burns will heal soon enough, probably with scars that he’ll carry for the rest of his days.
That’s okay. He’s free.
Tim stands beside Cass, small even compared to her short stature, welding mask pushed back and grinning as wide as his face can stretch.
Jason has a brief moment to notice he has blue eyes that match the sky overhead when his soul wrenches, reaching out to snag and entwine with Tim’s.
What. The. FUCK?
Tim blinks quickly, brows narrowing as he takes note that something is happening but not sure what. But Jason does. He’s a dragon born and bred, he knows what this call is, the throbbing pulse he now feels alongside his own. Stories told to him by his parents before he was stolen from them are coming to life and all he wants is to scream his pain all over again.
A soul bond.
His soulmate is a fucking human.
Jason roars again, his agonized wail forcing Tim to his knees, his own face scrunched in pain as he clutches at the sides of his head.
No, this can’t be happening. Not to him. Not with a human. Ignoring the roars and questions from the females, Jason runs, racing away from the roost.
