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After waking in his grave, body still broken, and mind too fractured by fear and pain to distinguish the now from then, nor to remember anything but the screaming realization in his head, he didn’t come to save me, he’s not coming to save me. Dad, where are you?! (forgetting even who the 'he' was or how to find his way home).
After being found by Talia, and furiously, futilely cared for, eventually thrown in the Pit as a last, desperate measure to restore, whole, what her beloved had lost (and maybe what was lost between them in the process—but what’s broken can never be put together again the same way, and she knew that).
After arriving (being dropped) on the doorstep, after the shock, the tears, after the shouts and accusations on both sides, the threats and the questions and the explanations.
After Bruce was satisfied that Jason was real, and Jason was satisfied—or least willing (desperately so) to be convinced—that Bruce cared. After.
After things had settled into the tense, awkward peace of people who loved each other but didn’t know how to say or show it.
Dick tried.
Jason was watching Bruce vanish at a quick pace down the hall to the west wing of the mansion (not the family wing, not where Jason was), fists clenched and trying not to burst into tears or punch a wall over being shown again that his dad, who was supposedly happy he was alive, was once again fleeing a conversation with him, that Dick brought it up.
“Bruce doesn’t handle… feelings well.”
Jason scoffed, and crossed his arms to keep his hands from reaching out to grab whatever was closest to him and send it crashing against the wall or the floor. “What else is new?”
Dick just cringed, but forged on. “He took your, uh, death, especially poorly.”
At this Jason whirled, red in the face and screaming. “HE did?! BRUCE was upset?! What about ME?! I’M the one who died, and HE wasn’t even THERE!”
Dick just wrapped his arms around Jason, tighter than a straitjacket, until Jason gave up trying to throw him off, panting and wishing he couldn’t feel the hot tears dropping off his older brother’s face (and what a shitty older brother he’d been until now, but Jason was feeling shitty enough himself that he would accept—craved, even—this love that felt indistinguishable from guilt) landing on the skin of his neck.
“He was there, Jason. You know that now, we told you. And it was too late, and it wasn’t enough, but he tried.
“And it broke him."
Jason tried to scoff again, but he felt a little too drained to muster enough disgust for it.
“I wasn’t there,” Dick said, still speaking into Jason’s shoulder, hiding his face from his younger brother. “I didn’t really see it. I didn’t want to see it. I knew it was happening, but I pretended I didn’t, because I was so, so mad. At him and at myself. If we were both hurting, and hurting each other, that seemed like a fair punishment.
“But I didn’t really realize how bad it had gotten, how I nearly let my anger… how close I came to repeating my mistake again, and letting the last of my family die without even realizing…”
Jason renewed his struggles, this time managing to shove Dick’s now limp arms away.
“You’re lying,” he hissed through swollen eyes. “Bruce isn’t nearly that bad. I’ve seen him. His emotional range doesn’t even extend that far. At most he gets sort of constipated.”
Dick sighed, leaning against the wall. “I didn’t realize how bad it had gotten,” he repeated, “until I saw the difference Baby Bird made.”
“Baby Bird?!” Jason was boiling again, any fear he may have felt on Bruce’s behalf gone up in steam. “Who the fuck is Baby Bird?!”
Dick managed a smile. “It’s not what you think. Bruce got a… uh, emotional support animal.”
Jason’s mind screeched to a halt from the direction it had taken off in.
“...What?”
“Yeah.”
Jason joined his brother in leaning against the wall, all the wind once again taken out of his sails. This emotional whiplash was making him tired. He closed his eyes.
“So, like, a dog or something?”
Dick was the one to snort this time, but in amusement. “Or something.”
Jason open his eyes again and simply stared at him, waiting for Dick to admit he was joking. He didn’t.
“And he named it Baby Bird?” he asked, incredulous, giving Dick a more than suspicious look. It was definitely more the sort of name he would expect from the progenitor of the terms Batcomputer, Wing-Ding, and many more.
Dick shrugged. “Don’t look at me. Like I said, I wasn’t there for this part. But I guess Baby Bird found his way into the Cave system, somehow. And decided to make Bruce his human. And that was that.”
Jason gave him an even more suspicious look. “A dog. Got into the Batcave? And what, Alfie was totally okay with this? Didn’t insist it go to the pound before it scratched up his floors and ruined the antique furniture?”
Dick grinned fully now. “Baby Bird, at the pound?” he mused. “Reminds me of a certain Disney movie.” The smile sobered. “But I think Alfie would have happily welcomed with open arms just about anything that distracted Bruce from his grief spiral at that point.”
Jason sighed, and slid down the wall to sit on the floor. “So what’s the point of this conversation, then? Just to tell me Bruce was getting over me? That he’s happier with a new adopted dog than an old adopted kid?” There was no heat in it. He didn’t really want to start another fight, but it was all he knew how to do these days.
Dick grimaced and slid down to sit beside him, bumping their shoulders together. “No, it’s to tell you that Bruce is still desperately afraid of losing you all over again. But because he’s Bruce, rather than tell you that, he’s running off to hug Baby Bird until he calms down basically every time you two talk.”
Jason tilted his head to peer down the hall. “So he’s keeping the dog in the west wing?”
“Yeah. I guess he’d been spending most of his time there, because there were less reminders of… us, on that end of the house. So it’s where Baby Bird’s been set up.”
Jason dropped his head onto his other shoulder. “So, don’t go into that wing. Got it.”
Dick pushed himself back to his feet with a groan, before reaching down a hand to help Jason.
“On the contrary. I think we should go visit. It’s time for you to meet Baby Bird.”
Jason allowed himself to be hauled up without protest.
“Who knows,” Dick said cheerily. “Maybe he can do double duty! You could use it, and you deserve it, too.”
“I don’t think service animals work that way, Dickhead,” Jason snarked back, but it was a friendly barb, and Dick took it as such, barking a laugh.
“Like Baby Bird has papers!” he chortled, the very idea of it apparently beyond amusing.
Still, the thought of hugging a dog and burying his face in its soft, warm fur sounded nice right about now, so Jason let himself pretend this could make everything better. And he didn’t really want to share, but maybe, if Dick was right, Bruce would even consider letting Jason get a dog of his own.
+ + + + + + + + +
Jason stared.
“That is NOT a fucking dog!” he shouted, finger jabbing across the room at the dragon rolling around in a kiddie pool full of multi-colored gemstones like a cat in a bed of catnip.
Dick grinned hugely. “No, it is not,” he agreed. Jason “deserved to pet the therapy dog,” yeah right. Dick had just been eager to show off the mythical fucking creature hidden on the other side of the manor.
“Language,” Bruce commented mildly, automatically, from where he was sprawled on the floor, leaning up against the kiddie pool’s shallow plastic wall and petting a hand over the soft leathery skin of the creature’s belly. It was about the size of a beagle.
“What the fu–dge,” Jason whispered.
“Don’t worry, they’re just colored glass,” Dick said, as if that was Jason’s main concern with this situation (actually, it was a big question, just not the first one to come to mind). “Apparently, clarity and sparkliness of the stone are more important traits in the discerning dragon’s eye, or at least this one's, than rarity, or whether it actually came from the ground as opposed to starting life as a beer bottle.”
Bruce stiffened as Dick rattled off this tidbit. Both boys caught the reaction, and turned to him in something like stunned horror.
“Are you kidding me, Bruce?” Dick shouted, hands on either side of his head as he re-examined how many gemstones must be in there, just based on the volume of the kiddie pool. “You told me they were glass!”
“They’re mostly glass,” Bruce agreed, hands raised in a calming gesture. “Even the Wayne family coffers aren’t deep enough to keep Baby comfortable, if that weren’t true.” The raised hands turned out in a shrug.
“But the Wayne family coffers also already contained several pieces that were just collecting dust in safe deposit boxes, so I figured someone may as well enjoy them, since it doesn’t look like I’m going to have any daughters to pass them down to.
“Just the least fragile ones,” he defended, as Dick dropped his face into his hands and Jason’s eyes bulged out of his head.
“Here, look,” Bruce said to them, sitting up and patting his thigh to get the dragon’s attention. “Baby,” he cooed when it tilted its head his way curiously. “Get Mother’s jewelry, hmm? Can you do that for me?”
The dragon rolled back onto its feet and shook itself like a dog. It had thick scutes like a crocodile’s across its back in place of more traditional scales, and was almost entirely red, but with black socks and a black blaze across its snout like you might see on a horse. The membrane of its wings, which it shook out once before folding them against its back, was also black.
Baby clambered out of the pool before bouncing up like it had springs for paws and pounced into a large plastic storage bin, as lithe as a cat, from which then emerged the sound of many small glass somethings as thick as gravel tinkling against each other. Jason processed the large scoop sitting on the ground beside the bin and realized the pool had probably been filled from that bin.
In almost no time at all, the dragon emerged and trotted over to Bruce triumphantly, spitting out a diamond and white platinum tennis bracelet, a silver ring with a sapphire the size of Jason’s thumbnail set with a surrounding of more diamonds, and an elaborate brooch of a heron in a stand of cattails picked out in yet more diamonds in white and brown and yellow. A rainbow opal that had to be at least 40 carats on a chain of braided gold and platinum hung around its neck before it shook it off at Bruce’s feet.
Bruce hummed approvingly and rubbed behind the dragon’s cow-like ears. “Good boy.”
The dragon accepted the pets with a closed-eyed look of pleasure before it turned, ready to dive back into the box. But Bruce clicked his tongue, causing it to look back over. “This is good enough, Baby. You don’t need to find all the earrings, too. I don’t want you to choke on them by accident.”
“What is even happening right now?!” Jason asked, gesturing wildly.
“Mother mostly preferred pearls, but Baby Bird didn’t seem to have much interest in them,” Bruce admitted sheepishly, “so I put those back in the bank’s care, which is why there isn’t much real jewelry here.”
“That’s the complete opposite of what I am getting at! And did you seriously give what is probably half a million dollars worth of precious jewels to what is basically your dog?! This is why you need me and Dick around! Without us, you become like those rich old ladies who leave their entire fortunes to their cats!”
Bruce looked a little offended at that. “Baby Bird’s not a dog. He’s a dragon. You wouldn’t be acting like this if I gave an actual dog a room full of toys, would you?”
“First of all, yes! I’d absolutely still make fun of you for spoiling your dog like that, what about what I just said implied I wouldn’t,” Jason shouted, now dragging his hands over his face exaggeratedly. “And second of all, it’s not even remotely the same thing!”
“I don’t know, Little Wing,” Dick said, hand on his chin as he considered it, the traitor. “Maybe it is the same? I mean, he is a dragon. He’s got different enrichment needs. Back in the circus, you couldn’t give the elephants the same treatment as the horses and expect them to be happy.”
He wasn’t a cuddly dog with a wagging tail, and hugging Baby Bird didn’t magically solve all their myriad problems.
But this was the closest they’d felt to family, to what they’d been before, what they should have been before—free to talk to each other without the weight of anything else leaning over the words—in a long time.
So as a therapy animal, Jason would admit, Baby Bird wasn’t too bad.