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Chapter Text

Jason sat on the edge as the sun began to fall out of the sky and bleed red on the horizon. The bay stretched out in front of him, glimmering gold, red, and pink in the sunset. He could only see water from his position on the cliff’s face, though he knew, beyond his eyesight, that there was another cave carved into the cliffside. It was bigger than the one he was in. It had an older nest in it. It also had stairs carved into the rock face so Jason could move freely to the world above and he wasn’t so effectively trapped within a cliff, only free to move beyond the nest at the whims of the birds. It wasn’t too far away, just a quick flight. 

But for a human like him, who couldn’t fly from the cliff or climb the flat rock face or survive the fall into the sea below or swim across the bay even if he didn’t, it was an impossible distance. 

Still he stared into that direction as night began to settle onto the water and darkness filled the sky. Only a few minutes after dark, Jason heard the first note. 

It was Bruce, singing for him like he did every night. Mourning him in the way of birds. Long and sorrowful, the song hung over the bay like a fog, lingering and filling the air like humidity. 

When Jason had first been taken, there had been more begging in the song. Bruce had been crying for his return, pleading for someone to bring him back. Now, though, as the weeks turned to months, the song had passed into mourning. 

Bruce didn’t cry for Jason’s return anymore. He just cried for his baby. 

“You have to return me,” Jason said into the air. The sea wind whipped his words away quickly, but Jason knew he had heard them. “The trick has become cruel, Dick.” 

He turned to look back at the harpy that was roosting in the nest, pretending not to be moved by their shared father’s song. 

If only Dick wasn’t such a stubborn son of a bitch. 

“All he needs to do is say he’s sorry,” grumbled the bird, the feathers around his neck ruffling in indignation making him look like an overgrown chicken. “Then I will return you.” 

Internally, Jason sighed. 

They had this argument nearly every night. Jason would ask to be flown back. Dick would bring up whatever dumb argument him and Bruce had had the night Dick stole Jason out of the nest. Dick wouldn’t listen to Jason telling him that Bruce probably didn’t even remember the argument. He had been so panicked when Jason went missing, he had probably forgotten the argument as completely as Jason had. 

After a few more moments, the song came to a close and the sound of the world around Jason became lapping waves again. 

He could imagine Bruce taking flight, spreading his massive wings out, and jumping into the sky to hunt along the surface of the sea. Jason wouldn’t be able to see him, but he still liked imagining he could. That maybe the blot in the distance was their father.

The wind slid across his body, quickly growing colder especially as Jason grew more damp from being this close to the ledge. 

“Jason,” said Dick behind him. “Come here. You’re getting cold.”

He turned to look at the bird over his shoulder. 

The harpy was roosting in the middle of his thrown-together nest, neck stretched towards Jason. He clicked his beak, like Jason was a disobedient hatchling, and Jason found himself moving towards the bird. Dick nuzzled him when he came close enough, brushing their cheeks together, human skin against human-like skin. The only completely bare part of a harpy was their human faces, all the rest of them was monstrous bird. 

Myths about harpies often portrayed them as more human than they actually were. Storytellers imagined them with bare breasts or human arms, making the monster into some salacious temptress by giving it more human features. The idea was ridiculous now that Jason had lived among them for multiple years.

For starters, they did not have arms, only massive, powerful wings. The shape of the wing depended on the individual, but they were always huge to keep their enormous bodies in the air. Technically, they did have one finger, a taloned thumb at the wrist of their wings, which they could use for limited handling of objects. 

That was actually why harpies sometimes stole humans for their nests. Although a few harpy flocks considered humans prey, most of them saw humans as a useful tool for the upkeep of their nests. They liked humans’ clever hands and nimble fingers, which were so good at moving small objects around and preening the feathers that they couldn’t get to themselves. Humans were also incredibly entertaining and another speaking creature to converse with. Most harpies kept one or two humans in a nest. 

They also didn’t care if the human consented to the role.

Bruce certainly hadn’t when he found Jason and plucked him from the ground in one massive foot. Jason had fought every step of the way, of course, convinced that he was being taken to a nest to be eaten or picked apart by massive hatchlings. He had quickly learned that Bruce hadn’t actually wanted to eat him and that the hatchling in the nest was more of an idiot than a killer. He had accepted when his role of “human-pet-tool-thing” became more like “son” and Bruce kept him protectively under his wing. 

He had long lost his fear of the harpies despite their size and the talons. He didn’t flinch when the wrist of a massive wing drew him closer to Dick’s blue-grey feathers. He didn’t think about the viciously curved talons hidden somewhere under the harpy’s bulk. The top of Jason’s head didn’t even come to the peak of Dick’s shoulder, and Dick was roosting down, while Jason was standing up. 

Dick had been right, Jason was cold, and he didn’t hesitate to tuck himself under his older brother’s wing and lean into the warm feathers. He felt the bird settle down deeper into the nest and Jason’s vision was filled with feathers.  

It was so close to being right. 

“Big Bird,” he whispered, knowing that Dick would hear him. “I want to go home.”

He didn’t see Dick’s expression, but he suspected that he knew what it would be. For all of Dick’s bluster, he looked like he was in pain every time he heard Bruce’s song. He also, when he thought Jason wasn’t looking, looked incredibly scared. He didn’t know if he had crossed a line, if he had broken things apart too completely. 

While he had Jason trapped in this nest, he was still part of Bruce’s flock.

When he returned Jason… well, he wouldn’t know until he did it. 

But he couldn’t keep Jason forever, they both knew it. Dick already hadn’t meant it to go on this long. He probably missed their home nest as much as Jason did, though he would never say that out loud.

Jason didn’t think Bruce would actually kick Dick out. Be furious, yes, but Bruce wouldn’t be keen on losing another son fresh off the whiplash of regaining the one he thought was dead. Their flock would mend, if Dick just allowed it to. 

“Soon,” Dick said so quietly that Jason almost thought he imagined it. “Let’s fly home soon.”

Chapter Text

Bruce had a little flea. 

“Can you let me ride on your back?” said the boy, blinking wide, blue, completely unfearful eyes. He was just a smidge of a human, so small that he practically did not exist. Bruce could hardly believe humans allowed their young to be so small. The boy looked like he could blow off the cliff ledge and into the sea at any moment. 

“No,” said Bruce flatly, turning his back to the boy so that he could hopefully return to his nap. Exhaustion was heavy in his chest. He had spent all night searching the Burnside Bay for any signs of Jason and speaking with Clark about his investigations in the sea. Neither had been fruitful and both had taken hours. 

“Return to your human caretakers, boy” he commanded, making his voice harsh. “I have no time for babysitting.”

“It’s boring over there, though,” the kid whined, his voice shrill. “And my name isn’t ‘boy’. It’s Tim. I’ve told you that before.”

Yes, he had. Many times and despite Bruce’s attempts to not to know it, to keep this boy at such a distance that he hardly acknowledged his existence, to be an animal to the boy and not a person to be conversed with, Bruce knew Tim. He knew that Tim was a temporary visitor to the coast and that his family was only there for the season. He knew Tim got home from his camp before his parents got off of work and disobeyed his home’s rules to explore the forests and cliffs around him. He knew that Tim had a bright red bike thrown into the dirt at the top of the cliffs. He knew that Tim was breaking multiple human laws regarding the harassment of wildlife by harassing Bruce continually and without repentance. 

“Go home, Tim,” Bruce repeated, turning his face almost completely around to fix the boy in his stare. Tim has been trying to stuff feathers into his little blue backpack. “It’s too dangerous here.”

“It’s not dangerous,” argued the boy, resuming his attempt to take more feathers, another thing Bruce told him not to do. 

Bruce sighed deeply and stood, shaking his feathers. “Of course it's dangerous. You’ve already fallen off the edge of the cliff twice due to your own clumsiness.”

“And you caught me both times!” Tim spread his arms open wide. “Look! Not even a single broken bone.”

“I could squish you,” said Bruce back, ambling a little closer to the child. He placed a foot near where Tim was standing. The toes, combined with their deadly hooked talons, were longer than the length of Tim’s whole body. So small. Entirely too fragile. How did humans let their young out of nests at all?  “You’re so tiny I can hardly see you at times. But despite this you never hesitate to get under foot.”

Bruce would not admit to the small bit of humour that was leaking into his serious tone. 

“You won’t do that,” said Tim, so sure of Bruce despite really any reason to be.

Bruce knew he was known to the nearby human settlements but he did not make any action to actually interact with them. Generally, he did what most harpies did, and kept to their own affairs. It was only practical as the species could do great damage to each other and had been enemies in the past. In eras before, harpies had been more eager to feed on humans and humans had retaliated by striking them from the sky. But eventually, through denizens of both species, they divided into mutual ignorance towards each other and limited interactions. It was not a perfect peace; some flocks of harpies still regularly dined on humans and harpies still had the custom of taking humans for their nests, but it was enough that most humans and harpies could live out their lives without conflict. 

Bruce was not a harpy that preyed upon humans or messed with their settlements, but Tim did not know that. The boy had crawled into his nest without warning or invitation, and another bird could have easily tossed him over the cliff to let the sea eat the interloper. He was lucky that Bruce had a soft spot. He was lucky that Bruce had been changed by his time caring for Jason.

“How can you be so sure about what I will and won’t do?” asked Bruce, lifting a huge foot to poke at Tim’s chest. The boy giggled and grabbed at the claw, feeling the sharp tip of the talon. 

“I just know.”

Tim sounded so confident. So trusting. 

Too trusting for a bird that had already lost one little boy. Bruce did not let himself think of Jason and how he had trusted Bruce so easily too. Bruce had promised him safety and still he had been stolen. Right out from under Bruce’s beak, his boy had been abducted from the nest and Bruce hadn’t done anything. He had thought his nest protected and still… and still…

Bruce turned his foot so he could grab Tim around the middle. 

“Hey!” Squawked Tim, as he instantly began to wriggle in Bruce’s foot. “ I asked if I could ride on your back! Not the foot!”

“We aren’t going for a ride. I’m taking you back up to the cliff top so you can start biking home.”

Bruce carefully waddled towards the cliff edge, despite Tim’s protests the entire time. When he was at the edge, he spread his wings and dove into the air with his cargo. It only kept him a few seconds to ride the wind up to the top and Tim complained the whole trip. 

When they were about 20 feet still above the ground, Tim began to wiggle even more and yelled about letting him down. 

Part of Bruce was tempted to drop the kid as he whined in his shrill child voice, but he remained a grown up and settled Tim gently on the ground. 

“I want to ride on your back next time,” Tim demanded, his wild hair rippling around his pale face. “Not foot. No more foot.” He kicked Bruce’s foot to further punctuate the point. Bruce hardly felt it. 

“Noted,” Bruce said drily, staring down at the kid. “Now go home.”

Tim lifted his chin, thoroughly stubborn to his bones. It was the kind of expression that made Bruce feel for Tim’s parents and understand why they dropped their child off at a camp for multiple hours each day. 

“Before, you so rudely interrupted me,” Tim said instead of making any move to leave. “I have something to show you.”

“No, Tim, I do not have time today. I have things I need to attend to.” Mainly sleep. He needed to sleep now if he wanted to continue scouring the Burnside Bay tonight. Bruce had found a shoe. A single, small little boy shoe that Bruce had recognised instantly. It may be nothing. Jason had lost clothing over the cliff edge before and the tide pulled objects in all directions but it was the closest Bruce had felt to the possibility that Jason could still be alive in weeks. 

“What kind of things?” Tim suspiciously narrowed his eyes at Bruce. “Do you mean your yelling?”

“My…” Bruce searched his head for what Tim could have meant. “Do you mean my song? The song I sing every night?”

“It’s a song?”

“It is a hymn for my lost child and a prayer to bring him back home.”

Tim blinked up at Bruce, gazing up at him with his head fully tilted back. “Does your song have like bird words or is it just like noise?”

Bruce huffed and turned his body to begin to lumber back to the cliff edge. “Goodbye, Tim.”

“Wait, wait, wait,” Tim’s voice rushed out and he pulled at Bruce’s tail feathers in an ineffective effort to stop him. “Please just let me show you my camera,” he begged. “It will take five minutes I promise.”

Bruce turned to look at Tim over his shoulder. The child was giving Bruce his best baby seal eyes, wide and glossy and pleading. It was the exact same expression that Jason had often weaponised against Bruce.

“Pleeeeaaassee. I even have some pictures of Dick! And your boyfriend!”

Bruce hated how easily those eyes worked on him. 

“Five minutes,” he grunted and Tim scrambled to pull something out of his bag. “And I do not have a boyfriend.”

Tim snorted. “Oh so that whale mer that you see every night is just your very special friend?”

“Clark is helping me piece together the mystery of my missing child,” Bruce said, his tone flat. “It is hardly romantic circumstances.”

“That’s okay,” Tim said with a smirk. “I won’t tell anyone that you make kissy faces at him.”

Bruce hardly even knew what ‘kissy faces’ meant, but he didn’t bring that up because Tim was trying to shove a black thing towards him and was telling him to look at something called a screen. 

Now harpies were impressive in many ways. They could pull whales from the sea and fly across mountain ranges in a day and battle the great white dragons of the north. Their eyes could see for miles and catch a pigeon in flight from a league off. 

They could not, however, see the immediate close up and what exactly this small child was pointing him towards. Whatever he was holding was just a blurry black thing in his hands. 

“This one is you,” he said, doing something to the object. “And this is your nest, and, oh this one is of Dick.”

Tim seemed to pause on the Dick one. 

“When is Dick going to come back? He’s been at his vacation home for a long time.”

Bruce only knew what a vacation home was because Tim had explained it as his own current situation. 

“I do not know. Dick is not vacationing,” corrected Bruce. “He is on a pilgrimage to honor the memory of his lost brother and find solace within his isolation.”

There was a long pause from Tim.

“What the heck does that mean?”

Bruce sighed, just one of many in this long visit from his little flea. “No matter, please just show me the picture of Clark so that I can get you home quicker.”

Tim stared at him for a few more moments, his keen eyes narrowing. Then, suddenly, he popped up, startling Bruce enough to make his feathers lift slightly. 

“You know what! Nevermind! I have to go home!” Tim said quickly, stuffing his camera back into his backpack and scrabbling towards his bike. 

Bruce was taken aback because Tim had literally never been eager to return home. “Tim, are you…”

“Bye Bruce!” said Tim, coming to a stumbling balance on his bike. “Enjoy your bird things! I’ll see you soon.”

Bruce could do little more than stare as the boy slowly biked away from the cliff edge and towards the forest path that would take him back into town. This sudden change of mood was so strange that Bruce nearly fluttered over there to hold Tim down and demand what was the matter. 

But Tim was not his boy and Bruce told himself he was not supposed to care. He couldn’t get himself involved with the affairs of humans again, especially not the delicate human young. But no matter how much he told himself this, it did not stop the feeling of a sinking rock in his stomach as Tim pedalled out of view.