Chapter Text
“We have a golden opportunity!” Dick leaned back in his chair, grin wide and shameless. “Eight months, minimum, to get away with anything.”
Tim sat hunched over on the edge of the table, leveling Dick with a deadpan tilt. “Two years. At least.”
“Father will have corrected this misconception by the end of the month.” Damian frowned, eyebrows scrunching in an endearing way.
Jason slung an arm around Damian’s shoulders with a smirk. “Hate to break it to you, Demon Brat, but B’s got no spine when it comes to personal relationships. I mean, look at us. Who in their right mind lets an eight-year-old run rooftops at three in the morning?”
“Speak for yourself, I was thirteen.” Tim stuck his tongue out at Jason.
“Same difference.” Jason flicked him in the forehead, earning an indignant scowl. “The point is—Bruce wants them as his friends. Whether he knows it or not.”
“Meaning he’ll struggle.” Dick said. “Now. Let’s add some adjustments to our suits.”
Damian frowned, muttering, “This is undignified.”
“Correction, kid,” Jason said, smug. “This is hilarious.”
Damian huffed, pulling himself free from Jason’s loose hold, chin tilting up at a sharp angle. “I will not be participating."
And yet, inevitably, he did.
At first, he only sat back, arms crossed, watching as his brothers gleefully mutilated their suits in the name of “cryptid accuracy.” The longer he observed, the more it offended him. Jason had stitched jagged claws onto his gloves with no sense of proportion, Tim was taping feathers in anatomically impossible places, and Dick—Dick was happily gluing anything vaguely bird-shaped wherever it fit.
By the time Jason was bragging about his extra “feral points” and Dick was debating glitter accents, Damian had sprung from his chair.
If they were going to do this, then they were going to do it right.
“Bird feathers would never grow there, Drake.” He snapped, arms folded as he loomed over Tim’s handiwork with all the disdain his small frame could muster.
Tim blinked at him. “...You know a lot about bird molting patterns for someone who supposedly doesn’t care.”
Damian didn’t respond. His attention had already shifted to his eldest brother.
“Absolutely not!” Damian barked, snatching a feather straight out of Dick’s hand before it could be hot-glued to a shoulder pad.
Jason raised an eyebrow, smirking. “Look at him go. Our self-appointed cryptid fashion police.”
“Birds don’t have five toes, Todd!” Damian growled, physically shoving Jason’s boot aside to correct it.
Jason laughed, leaning on the table. “They do when they’re monsters.”
“You’re monsters,” Damian bit back, already reorganizing the feather pile. “If we are going to masquerade as creatures, we will at least look anatomically correct.”
He wouldn’t admit it aloud, but deep down, Damian felt a small spark of satisfaction. Moments like this were rare, and he cherished them. Even if the bonding came at the expense of reason, he couldn’t deny the quiet comfort of being part of his family, even in the most insane of circumstances.
Tim ended up swapping out the bright reds and yellows of his usual motif for the deeper, more natural tones of a red-capped robin. He had extended the nose of his mask into a subtle beak shape, topping it with a small cluster of red feathers that poked up from his forehead. His cape became a makeshift pair of wings, a cascade of feathers glued over the fabric rather than anything functional. He added feathers along the edges of his gloves, letting them flare slightly at his forearms, and mirrored the effect on his elbows and knees.
Since Nightwing wasn’t a bird, Dick took the opposite approach, leaning into a design that echoed Batman. He had long since abandoned the cape after retiring from Robin, insisting it was “dangerous”—as if he were ever in danger of getting tangled in a plane engine. Instead, he fashioned webbing between his arms and sides to mimic wings, sleek and dark rather than colorful. He added a pair of the new ears to his mask, and outfitted his gloves with sharp, claw-like extensions at the fingertips.
Damian kept his classic Robin colors, a choice made by everyone. The bright red, green, and yellow were integral to being Robin. He refused to alter his cape, keeping it exactly as before, but took a lead from Dick and adapted his arms into wing-like forms. Not full wings. More of a graceful lining of feathers, reminiscent of a feathered raptor.
The feathers themselves were carefully selected: a mix of soft down and pin feathers, signaling his status as the youngest among the siblings. He even went further than Tim, adding feathers across the rest of his suit and beginning the subtle formation of a tail, a small flourish that tied his ensemble together without straying from the Robin aesthetic. In Damian’s eyes, it was the perfect balance.
Jason transformed himself into the farthest thing from a bat he could. He covered his torso and arms in feathers like his brothers, the colors shading in a subtle gradient from deep brown to a soft, almost golden tip. His red helmet was gone, replaced with a beaked mask that framed his face, feathers jutting out from the sides of his head like untamed hair.
He deliberately left his suit wingless—a dark nod to his own death. “A wingless bird is a dead bird,” he said with a smirk, letting the metaphor speak for itself. Instead he cut slits into the back of his leather jacket, in an attempt to show that he might have had wings at some point. To complete the effect, he reshaped his boots into talon-like feet. “If you’re not going all out,” he declared, “why do it at all?”
The four of them stood together now, each in their newly redesigned suits, silently admiring one another. Tim adjusted a feather at his elbow, Dick flexed his clawed gloves experimentally, Damian inspected the alignment of his feathers, and Jason merely tilted his head, trying to get used to the fact he no longer had a helmet.
“Perfect!” Dick finally exclaimed, throwing his arms wide and clapping his hands together with enthusiasm. The sound echoed slightly off the walls of the cave.
Tim preened slightly, adjusting a stray feather at his elbow. “My feathers are just subtle enough not to draw too much attention. That way I can still hide in the shadows.”
Jason snorted, rolling his eyes while tightening his boots. “Subtle? Tim, we’re all in ridiculous bird suits. The only difference is I actually committed to mine.”
Damian, arms crossed and cape slightly ruffled, gave a sharp tilt of his head. “Your gradient is sloppy, Todd. Feathers should overlap in a natural pattern, not in arbitrary clumps. And—” he jabbed a gloved finger toward Jason’s boots, “—those claws are far too curved. A real bird—”
“Yeah, yeah, ‘real bird.’ I’ll fix it later, Demon Brat.” Jason reached over and ruffled Damian’s hair, earning a sharp growl as Damian swatted his hand away with surprising force for his size.
Tim leaned back on the table, looking down at Damian with a teasing smirk. “You do realize you’re going to have to act like a feral child, right? You up to the task?”
Damian’s eyes narrowed, but a flicker of pride betrayed him. “Of course I am, Drake.” He straightened, chest puffed slightly. Then, almost imperceptibly, a small smirk tugged at his lips. “I am trained in all forms of undercover work.”
“We’ll have to loop Steph and Cass in when they get back,” Dick added absently—though the gleam in his eye promised he was already imagining their reactions.