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They're creepy and they're kooky, mysterious and spooky, they're all together ooky, the Batfamily

Summary:

The bats go to the Watchtower to teach classes to young League members on things that their mentors didn't think to do so, Tim meets some family again while he is there

Notes:

(See the end of the work for notes.)

Work Text:

Tim hadn't wanted to go to the Watchtower that day.

He had been perfectly content staying within the cursed city that they called home, protecting it with the Sirens as the rest of the bats and birds found their way to world of space once more, B insisting that they helped in training some of the newer recruits whose mentors were… lacking in some regards.

(Too meta to remember that not all humans heralded as fast as they did, or had abilities that helped in assisting civilians in such things, and thus didn't know they way around some of the more basic or in depth medical practices for humans.

Too bright and daylight based to know some of the more basic hacking or mechanical types things that anyone should know for any sort of stealth.

Too specialized to know any other sorts of weapons.

Too normal to know how to read others well.

Too gifted in one way or another to know how to truly be scrappy with what was on hand, or how to lie in a needed sort of way.

There were a lot of things that the kinder heroes of the world didn't know that those from Gotham did, and thought that if they hadn't needed it, then no other hero from their city would either

It was a stupid assumption)

Red Robin had been brought in for basic hacking and such. He may not have told Bruce that he the flash drives that he had brought were so that those learning from him could follow along and make a Trojan Horse for the more deadly sorts of things that he knew as well. What the man didn't know wouldn't hurt him, and Tim could always lie his way out of later.

Another reason that he was being brought in.

Lies and aliases, he was the best at both out of them all, and it fit well enough into his technical section that they had it eat up as a follow up seminar of sorts where part of it was going to be creating a digital paper trail for more long term or scrutinized aliases.

(He just knew that there was going to be at least one bat or bird in the audience for the actual identity part, trying to use something like Caroline Hill against him. Shame for them as he liked most of his identities other than Mr. Sarcastic.

He missed Alvin Draper)

None of what they were teaching was going to place any of the heroes to be on the same level as the vigilantes of Gotham, but at the least it should be able to keep them alive should something of stealth be needed in their missions to come.

(And if they also had another lecture that he, Kon, Cassie, and Bart were apart of that was just a list of things from their Young Justice and more insane Titan's days, made specifically to show how to react to the insane things that just might occur during their missions - like sentient cars, travels to evil alternate timelines, the Santa Incident, the Baseball Incident, or breaking people out of government labs - then that was besides the stealth point.)

So, while Tim didn't want to be there because teaching new heroes that like to look at the Robins - former and present - and think that because they are older or hold more powers than them, that the vigilantes of Gotham and Bludhaven are inferior, he could see the need for it still

Didn't mean that he couldn't avoid it like one of Gotham's college professors avoiding walking into their freshman psychology class on the first day of the semester and praying to gods that none of them believe in that they aren't about to be teaching the next Harley Quinn.

Constantine cursing up a storm under his breath a he seemed to be waiting for someone was as good of a distraction as any for the moment.

Tim walked up silently to the older man, his cowl drawled back to just a domino for the day as Kon had said that it made people less likely to flinch than the full Red Robin costume usually seemed to even when among heroes. Something about his reputation preceding him, though if that was the one that the former Robin had earned, or a combined effort of the former wearers of his latest title, the bird had never cared to learn. Everyone feared the bats and the birds of Gotham regardless of if they held the bright smiles of Nightwing and Spoiler or r the shadows of Batman and Black Bat.

(Besides after so long spent in a different mantle that had been held by others, one got used to being held accountable for the actions of those that came before them)

"You know that you can't smoke in here right?" the former Robin asked, watching with a twisted sort of glee as the Brit jumped ion his skin like the teen was a demon calling for another piece of the other's soul, shoving away the lighter that he had been about to use as the blonde turned to meet the domino of Tim's gaze. "It'll make Supes sad, which pisses B off, and makes him all the more punchable."

He listened as the con man cursed something under his breath about bats and something that sounded a lot like a name that Tim hadn't heard since he was young.

Since before he was one of the bats, one of the birds.

"You here to teach some of those classes, Red?" The man asked, moving the unlit cigarette through his fingers like one might a blade or a card.

Or lock picks, but they were leaving those lessons to Steph. She wasn't the best at it, but Jason would rather just shoot offending locks away when the needs arose and Dick's optimism an be a bit too much for those already frustrated.

"Yeah," the Gotham vigilante admits, a smile that was much too sharp for anyone's liking slipping over his lips after a moment, "I'll have a bunch of young hacker by the end of the day, maybe even some explosions if we're lucky."

"You always did like those," a new voice said, one that made both turn in recognition.

"You know the psychics that I had called in?" The Brit asks under his breath, looking between the miniature Bat himself and the pair of helpers that he knew better than to let out of his sight for anything more than the bathroom, with something like horror.

He never wanted to live in a world where one of the Bats was known by an Addams on sight, yet here that world was.

Right before him.

"Aunt Morticia," Tim said with something of a demented smile on his lips, the sort of smile that was mirrored on that of the woman in question. "Wednesday."

"I told you that we should have brought the knives, Mother," the dark haired girl said, her tone flat to most but Tim could hear the warmth there. "They always make such a good greeting after a long time apart."

"Maybe next time, dears," Morticia answers placatingly to them both, as the pair stop firmly before the teen, uncaring of the eyes that had become drawn to them at the mention of blades.

An Addams never did care about such things.

"Cousin," Wednesday greeted, knowing better than to say the boy's name when he was wearing a mask as he was, even as an Addams would always know another of their family no matter what means they took to conceal themselves.

Even when an Addams married into another family and took on the name Drake to forget all about the roots of which she had come from other than the few times Aunt Janet had brought her cousin for a visit when they had been young before the woman's death.

She never had inherited the strangeness of the Addams family all that much, but Timothy had it in spades, even when he seemed to tamper it down to the levels that the bats of Gotham allowed.

"How have you been?" The eldest Addams asks, her tone warm. "Dreadful I hope."

"In more ways than one," the vigilante admits, the pair before him picking up on the meaning of it. "Though I did get to try cloning a little over a year ago, and got to meet people affected by a Lazarus Pit. Funny thing that is. Lost an organ along the way as well, I suppose," he adds that last sentence as something of an afterthought, as if it didn't mean much to him. The Addams pair knew that it didn't. Not in a family as gifted as theirs. "There's also the bats themselves, they're all a bit like our lot, though a bit too normal at the end of the day, I suppose."

There's pair nodded as he spoke, pleased with the blending of worlds that the other had found in a way that Janet Drake never had seemed to be able to, even as Constantine was watching the three with something like resignation.

Wednesday was just about to tell her cousin of the success that she had made in convincing her father to let her use the guillotine on Pugsley when the four of them saw a shadow walking towards them.

Multiple in fact.

"Red Robin?" Bruce, cause he was Bruce then in the concern in his voice at all that he had just heard, asks.

Tim smiles at him in that strange way that he sometimes does. It was the same exact smile that the woman seemed to hold as she looked upon him as well.

"This is my cousin Wednesday and my aunt, Morticia," the former Robin explains as the other members of the bats and birds make their way close, the whole lot of them having arrived to teach their own classes while the three Addams had been talking and Constantine had been watching in something like horror at the knowledge that there were more of the damned family. "Their Addams."

He says the name as if it explains everything.

The look from more than one of the bats and birds says that it doesn't.

Tim sighs. "We're not exactly metas," he explains, "just… strange."

"That's putting it mildly," Constantine mutters beneath his breath. They all hear it still.

The former Robin doesn't disagree. how could he? Though to him, the rest of the world are the strange ones, his mothers for giving up this side of the family and its traditions at home, only taking them back in when visiting, the world for giving into being normal and breakable and end-able.

An Addams doesn't die unless they wish to (something that his mother had never seemed to understand, but she had always been the breakable sort) they don't age either. Any other way of living just seems insane to someone like him. That's why the bats made the most sense to him, they were still more normal than he would have liked, but they were a far cry from most others within the world that weren't holding some meta gene to them or an alien.

(he thinks though that Kon would fit in the best with this side of his family, given how he had reacted to Tim trying to clone him when he had learned, that hungry sort of look in his eyes that even the thought of brought a blush to to the bird's cheeks)

"Violence and attempted murder and poison and such are usually play to us," the teen explains when he sees Bruce gearing up to seemingly ask what he mean as by strange.

The older vigilante nods, even as he only understands it by half. Alfred had raised him with weapons in his hands, yes, but this was more than that.

(He wondered if this was why Tim always liked to fight large groups at once, more so than any of the other of his children, because something in him was built to think it fun, to withstand it and heal from it almost within the hour - now that he thought of it logically as if it had never been there other than the scars)

"Wait," Dick said, all but raising his hand, his voice sounding as if he was just realizing something. "Is this why you were so sad after Hood, Robin, and Spoiler attacked you? Because you knew that it didn't mean what you thought that it should?"

Their Addams birds in question look at the boy almost expectantly, waiting for the teen to answer.

"Yeah," the former Robin answers simply, thinking back to the times in question. "The brick to the face was basically flirting, and the murder attempts were basically sibling bonding, though no one else seemed to see either of those like that at the time. Pity."

(the kick from the window had been a bit like flirting too, Tim tried to forget that one though)

"So many things make sense now," Steph whispered beneath her breath.

She was right, it did. To them all.

When the bats agree to spar with the teen more as they walk to the classes that they were supposed to be teaching - the Addams going with Constantine with a promise to visit once their help was no longer needed - wanting to help the teen that seemed to need the violence a bit more than they thought, Tim agrees that it would, something dark and excited in his gaze that makes the others wonder what they had just gotten themselves into.

(Still, they would go along with it if it meant that Tim continued to laugh like he never really did before when they sparred in the past, like he was alive now that he had been given permission to be)

Notes:

not very good, I know, but it's been in my drafts for a fat minute so I just wanted it out

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