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Lu Ten is barely four summers old and fresh from living in the Fire Nation colonies when he and his father return to Caldera. The moment the ship slinks into a slip and is moored tightly to the dock, Lu Ten is weaving from his father’s distracted hold and deftly walking down the ropes of the stern line to land onto the cleats holding the good general’s boat ashore. He doesn’t receive much trouble as he hops his way from post to post, the dock workers and navy soldiers too afraid to bother the Crown Prince’s darling son.
As Iroh treads slowly down the gangplank, he is met halfway by a stern faced port master. Although the officer doesn’t hesitate to give the standard bow, there is water like ease with which he treads forward to meet the Dragon of the West. “The men will be glad to know you’ve had your hands full, General Iroh.”
Iroh’s mouth tilts upwards, but the smile doesn’t quite reach his eyes. “I am only glad he still feels so bright, Admiral Kenji. Most days I don’t know what to do without my Natsu.”
The port master softens a bit at that. “I heard. Although I’m glad you're back home, my prince, I truly wish it had been under happier circumstances.”
“As do I. She always loved the ginkgo this time of year. Natsu would’ve loved bringing Lu Ten to see the komoritori.”
Kenji smiled, tilting a hand to his brow, he squinted towards the edge of the harbor, where two tall rows of ginkgo trees marked the entrance of the main road to the palace. Even from here, murmurations could be seen flocking around the canopies. “They are rowdy this time of year. Days are getting darker sooner.”
Turning back, he faced his smile towards the general. “You need anything at all while you’re back in Caldera, General, I’m your man.”
They begin to walk down the dock towards the Town that marked the entrance to the capital of Caldera. From here, Lu Ten could be seen in the distance brightly chattering to dockworkers as he hung from some miscellaneous crate, or two. Knowing the general, Admiral Kenji didn’t seem too nervous about the boy standing on precariously stacked shipments if he wasn't. Iroh, seemingly used to his antics, continued to walk and talk with the admiral. “Good to know I have the favor of a few people back in the dragon den. I was afraid knowing I am not a popular man after spending so long away from the heart of our nation.”
Surprisingly to Iroh, who startles, Admiral Kenji guffaws loudly. The sentiment is echoed from a few of the men on the dock who are more brave- or a little less sharp witted— and they try to stifle their comments and snickers. The admiral continues on, waving a hand in the air as if batting away a foul odor. “Ozai playing his court politics safely in the palace? Over our prince, the general fighting in the colonies? Please.”
Iroh can’t help but smile at that but politely brushes the comment away. “You forget yourself, Kenji. We are growing out of unruly soldier boys that can say anything they want to so brazenly in the open.”
“The men on these docks are mine as much as I am yours. You worry too much, especially over things most of Caldera already knows.” Once they reach the entrance of the main road to the palace, the admiral offers a small, informal bow. “Ah, I keep you too long. My men will keep your dragon child from falling off the pier, but don’t think any of them have the guts to tell him to settle down.”
Iroh offers his own bow, a bit lower than what would be expected of a Prince. “It was good to see you, Kenji.”
“And I to you, Iroh.” The admiral turns back into the port and waves over his shoulder as he leaves. His thumb points over his shoulder to the lookout tower standing at the beginning of the port. “Now go. Before your boy climbs that port tower next.”
The good general makes his way out of the harbor by the time Lu Ten is halfway up the port tower. It takes a bribe of high trees and city roofs with steady handholds to coax him down.
Iroh watches the way Lu Ten smiles at the trees, his face untouched by grief and feels almost as light at the birds his little one loves to imitate as he swings through trees in the Earth Kingdom colonies. As Lu Ten’s face is turned to the canopies of gingko above them, Iroh asks softly.
“What are you looking at, my little dragon?”
Lu Ten’s nose scrunches at the nickname, it always does. He had never quite sat right with the moniker. He shrugs and points up at the bright red birds fluttering around the oldest ginkgo branches. “Mm, nothing. Just like the way they sing.”
“I see. Well, it’s time to meet our family, so we best get moving. The day flies without us.”
“Family?” Something in his eyes flickers.
“Yes. My father, my brother. I’ve been away for… a long time.”
Lu Ten continues watching a group of barely grown hatchlings in the trees above them chase after each other and singing. He wondered how his father liked having a brother. Looking up it seemed nice.
“Your mother always loved watching the komoritori this time of year.”
Lu Ten tilts his head, blinking slowly. Iroh laughs heartily as he pushes him gently forward towards the palanquin waiting ahead of the trees framing the road.
“Batbirds, little one.”
And something about that just feels the slightest bit familiar. As they leave, the song of red batbirds rattle through the trees in harmony.
The palace didn’t so much get used to Lu Ten as much as most servants and dock workers were harassed by said dragon monkey dangling from some awning or beholden to a sudden, too quiet appearance daily. It's not really something a normal person gets used to. Of course, the too present, sharp toothed eyes of the Crown Prince somewhere in the background helped as well.
Menace? My Lu Ten? Certainly you are mistaken, Councilman Boshi. My little komoritori is simply elated to be home. Wouldn’t you be if you had spent so many years in the colonies? Ah, I see. You’ve never- well, I suppose making sure my father’s inkwell is always full is considered quite the strenuous task nowadays. But please, let this Crown Prince know of his subject’s opinions, I implore you.
Most interventions concerning Lu Ten went as such. How a man could get the masses to forget a general’s ruinous military pursuits in lieu of the catty, overbearing yet loving father, Caldera would never know. His son’s menacing nature had to come from somewhere.
Without a collective prevention, most days, the lone prince could be seen in the highest places and the unlikeliest of nooks and crannies. It drives the royal falconer mad when he finds the kid there more often than not, swinging his feet from the high posts where the coops are kept, watching the firehawks go to and from. Thus begins Lu Ten’s infinitely more tedious relationship with the royal groundskeeper when he begins to scale the old, wooden fringes of the palace rooftops to escape the falconry, usually at the expense of more than a few tiles.
When Lu Ten tires of the roofs and gables, however, the royal gardener, one of the few rare people fond of his antics, finds him looped around the branches of Caldera’s tallest gingko tree. For all of Lu Ten that was his father and Azulon and Sozin before him- the boy had a strange reverence for the high limbs of the great tree. Whether it be the leafless branches during the colder seasons or the full bloom of spring- little batbird Lu Ten was sprawled on some trunk like he was born to be there.
On one of those days, Lu Ten finds one of the little Ty sisters roaming the gardens. Though, from another point of view, one could say the little Ty sister finds the prince instead when she looks up to see him dangling upside down from one of the branches.
“So, which Ty sister are you?”
Surprisingly, she doesn’t startle at his upside down face. “…Ty Lee.”
Lu Ten nods, straightening out. “You know, I think I see you come here a lot during this time. Don’t you all have lessons with the royal tutors?”
The girl scrunches her nose at the thought of it. “They do.”
“You don’t like school?”
“No, I love it. Just… not with my sisters.” Ty Lee says the word ‘sisters’ like she’s only just getting used to the idea despite being the youngest of them for what should be years now.
Lu Ten hums and twists his feet to swing down to a lower hanging branch closer to offer her a hand. To his delight, Ty Lee grins and reaches back, taking to the height like a bird on air. Eyeing her balance deftly on the branch as easily as he, he finds the perfect topic to switch over to.
“I always see you scribbling in that notebook of yours.” He gestures to her hands, covered in charcoal dust and the small bound book tucked into her obi.
Ty Lee has none of the guarded antics that most artists do around their sketchbooks. Or she trusted him for some reason, despite being essentially a stranger. Her hands flip open to a few of the pages, still life drawings of animals, nature, and Caldera city sprawls. “Yeah. I like watching everything in person, it makes drawing them out a lot more realistic.”
Lu Ten looks over her shoulder at a page layered in native Fire Nation birds and perks up. “Do you like the batbirds too?”
Ty Lee startles at that, feet wobbling over the edge of a branch. Lu Ten has to reach out to steady her. She stares at him wide eyed before Lu Ten points upwards to said birds floating around the ginkgo limbs just as easily as Lu Ten did. She deflates at that, her bright eyes dimmed yet uncowed.
“Oh. Right. Well, I actually come to draw, ah…” Ty Lee shuffles around on the ginkgo limb for a moment. “You are very dynamic for human sketches.”
He looks down to see the page Ty Lee has flipped to.
“Whoa, those look so different from how my tutor does it!” Lu Ten gently traces his fingers around the thin ink lines of his own visage, lithe lines, midleap. The style has a less metaphorical nature that was popular in the courts at the time and took on a more grounded likeness.
Ty Lee smirks wryly. “If you think these are good, you should see Dami’s- uh— Azula’s stuff. She only really taught me because I missed-“ Ty Lee does an aborted twitching motion with the pointer finger of her right hand but halfway through seems to remember who she’s talking to and shoves the book back into the band of her obi.
Lu Ten plows through, finally hearing about his little cousin who he was forbidden to see.
“So Azula likes art?”
“Very much.”
“And she taught you?”
“Painfully, I guess.”
“She seems nice.”
“‘Nice’ wouldn’t be a word I’d use.”
“Hm?”
“Nothing.”
Lu Ten takes a moment to climb higher, watching Ty Lee scale the tree, following him. Her movements, although not as flexible as his own, were practiced and graceful. She kept up with this rather quickly, all with a blinding grin growing on her face the longer she was climbing with him. When they get to the top, he can see the entirety of the palace and the city beyond it, sprawling further out to the port and the ocean. The wind blows just right over them and suddenly, Lu Ten is overcome with a sureness that he and Ty Lee have done this before. “Have I met you before?”
Ty Lee, looks back, equally as breathless and without hesitation, replies. “Yes.”
Lu Ten squints, thinking hard enough his head began to ache before shrugging and reaching out to ruffle Ty Lee’s hair. “Your dad is an admiral, right? I bet we met outside waiting for our fathers to finish. War meetings are no fun, huh?”
The smile she returns is fond, even if it is a little sad. “Yeah. That’s probably where.”
Lu Ten quiets, choosing to simply watch the batbirds. Sharing the view makes them sing all the more sweeter in his opinion.
“Hm. Sucks that you don’t like your sisters all that much.” Ty Lee hasn’t been smiling for a while now. Something about that makes Lu Ten’s chest ache. Words fall out of him, possessed by that little voice fluttering in his chest since he’d been born. “Maybe I could be your brother instead! I’ve always wanted siblings.”
Like magic, Ty Lee seems to forget whatever had plagued her mood and immediately starts laughing.
Lu Ten whines. “What did I say?”
Through her giggles, Ty Lee manages to huff. “Nothing, nothing. Just wished I talked to you sooner- that it didn’t take me skipping lessons to be some noble to do it.”
Lu Ten hums, pensively. “…Ever thought about joining the circus?”
That makes her laugh even harder and Lu Ten doesn’t know whether to be proud of himself or offended, maybe this is just a little sister thing. Probably. He doesn’t know how he knows that, but something about it feels right so he lets it go. Lu Ten starts to find little Ty Lee trailing after him more after that, a terribly overanalytic glint in her eye.
One of the many days during Lu Ten’s roaming of the palace, he stumbles across one half of the cousins he’s been unspokenly hidden away from. Nowadays, after the years went slowly by filled with more tree climbings, acrobatics, and Ty Lee’s constant presence- but there was neither hide nor hair of any fire sparks in his hands. Lu Ten liked the idea of a family, but they didn’t seem to like him all that much in return. They probably thought nonbenders were contagious.
Instead, he ignored his family’s fake and overly sickly sweet faces and began carrying the escrima, weapons his father had led him through the training for so carefully. By now, he’d surpassed even his father’s own mastery. He wouldn’t brag aloud… but the look in the general’s eye would say he was very good.
Which is why he couldn’t just stand by and watch a lone kid haphazardly swing around dual dao in an abandoned training yard. Being alone, it was like the guards were practically praying the kid slipped up and accidentally lobbed off one of his limbs or two.
“Whoa there, you’re gonna take somebody’s eye out!”
The kid startles and faces towards him, brandishing swords a little too big for his body. Lu Ten has just raised his hands in peace when his eyes fall on the kid’s face.
“Hey! You’re the baby cousin! Or one of them at least. Zuko, right?”
The boy doesn’t deny it and huffs- so Zuko it is. Probably.
“You need help? A spar, maybe?”
The look on Zuko’s face said something more along the lines of “I’d rather eat my own leg” or “Yes, if you play as a training dummy” but didn't say no. Lu Ten is so close to giving up to back away before the kid has a conniption but Zuko’s surprisingly gruff voice grunts out a painful, “Maybe”.
Lu Ten smiles, bolstered by the nonviolence. He makes to unsheathe his escrima sticks and a viscous glint comes to life in Zuko’s eyes. Before he can backtrack, thinking that maybe he shouldn’t have offered to spar an overzealous kid with not one, but two swords and a litany of obvious anger issues, the tiny figure springs towards him. Despite what he saw earlier, the kid has the basics down to an art. The only thing he finds is his tendency to overshoot his blows, almost like he’s overcompensating for his height. Even with the deadly scowl on his face, his movements are focused. Still, his baby cousin is only that. A baby cousin.
It takes a little less than a minute to lay the kid out flat on the training ground. He holds a hand out to help him up but Zuko only sighs, slumping to the ground more tired than any prepubescent kid should be. Lu Ten instead sheathes his escrima to pick up the abandoned swords. He twirls the dual dao in his hands deftly, the muscle memory not too dissimilar to his weapon of choice.
When he looks back towards Zuko, still sprawled on the ground, he’s met with the scrunched up scowl of a twelve year old. He ignores that and goes through katas slowly. “It’s like you’re trying the moves you see the instructors do- but your body can’t keep up. Once you master the basics, I know you’ll be fine, though.”
Zuko laughs bitterly. “You can say it. All the instructors do.”
Lu Ten isn’t quite sure what Zuko means by that but he catches the stiff line of his shoulders, the barely seated rage in his eyebrows. The fear. Inadequacy and overcompensation.
“I’m too much, aren’t I? Too angry.” Zuko’s finger twist in the ground, leaving deep divots. “It doesn’t even do good for making any sort of sparks, much less, the blade.”
Lu Ten mulls over what his father would have said before replying. “We can change the fury into something else-“
Zuko looks at him grumpily, but Lu Ten pushes on. “Something that sits in your body better.”
The thought comes to him suddenly.
“Love. Maybe protection or righteousness.” Lu Ten expects the scoff he gets from the kid still furiously sprawled on the ground. “No, really. My dad always says humans weren’t built for rage- that the best skills come when you have a reason to protect.”
Zuko sighs, more tired than annoyed at this point. “Why love? Doesn't it make you just as angry? Just as miserable?”
Zuko takes a breath halfway through speaking, almost like he couldn’t control his words. He looks away, quiet, before speaking again. “Doesn’t it disappear?”
Lu Ten thinks back to the colonies. Days of barely seeing his father, days in the sun and dirt and trees with the blurry memory of his mother. The war outside the borders, the air seeped with violence and despair. Father coming home, alone- things changing to being just the two of them. Coming home. Watching the komoritori. The lines between his fathers brow softening. That unnameable feeling in Lu Ten’s gut his whole life that fluttered like a bird. “No. I think it just changes form. Something different- but still the same.”
There's a beat of silence before Zuko groans loudly. “God, that was sooo sappy. You really are still the same, huh?”
“Same?” As compared to what, Lu Ten thought. He was starting to wonder, truly, if he had amnesia by the way all these miscellaneous kids spoke about him.
Zuko just smiles, his grin all teeth and mischievous. “You’re a dick.”
That earns him a pinch to his baby fat cheek and a lecture about 'appropriate language for twelve year olds'. Still, Lu Ten has managed to get the kid out of that pit of of a bad mood so he counts this as a successful first meeting (or at least Lu Ten’s first meeting he could remember- he could never tell with these kids). “Really, if I hear you say something like that again, I’m telling your father-”
“I have no father.” The fervent rage throws the careful budding happiness of their previous interaction out of the window.
Lu Ten pauses for a moment before handing the dao back to Zuko, his grip on the hilt tight and white. He decides to roll with it and weakly replies. “Well. Just don’t let Ozai hear you say that.”
Zuko hisses through his teeth, all fang and sharpness. No, hurt. Reassured by something in him pushing him forward, Lu Ten just draws closer, sure and steady.
Quietly, he asks. “Well, then. How about a brother?”
And for the first time that Lu Ten has met his little cousin, he catches the start of a small smile on Zuko’s face.
It might be that Lu Ten’s magic pep talk to his new little brothers loosens the hold the guard has on Azula because it barely takes a week for him to come across a dark shadow at the edge of the turtleduck pond of one of his favorite trees. The girl wastes no time walking up to him the second he climbs down and his feet touch the ground.
Azula hisses at him. “You.”
Lu Ten laughs nervously. “Uh, me?”
The girl, her eyes like sharp glass marches forward, to crowd Lu Ten who now sits at the edge of the pond. She stares down at him, staring and staring, almost searching in a way. After a long while, she slumps down at his side pulling bread from the folds of her sleeves.
“You really don’t know anything, do you?”
Lu Ten isn’t quite sure what to say to that. He is spared from replying as Azula continues talking to herself, it seems more likely now. “It’s fine, I suppose. I’ll wait. That’s what you would do anyway.”
Azula then stares sullenly at the pond, gently tossing crumbs in to feed the turtleducks despite the frustration on her face. Lu Ten is overcome with a certainty that regardless of her words, this girl loves completely, tenderly and without question. It’s sort of amazing how much contradiction could settle in such a tiny body.
Lu Ten isn’t quite sure what Azula means by what she says to him. His new siblings all seem to have a habit of saying things he never understands but he can’t bring himself to be bothered. All he knows is that despite Azula’s seemingly nonchalant words, there’s a deep indiscernible emotion in the way she holds herself close enough to him to reach out but not so near to touch him. Something unsteady and unnatural. Lu Ten hates his apparent amnesia of all his siblings and suddenly it's a reflex to initiate the connection Azula seemed so unsure to create.
“You know how to climb?”
Azula stares darkly and unimpressed back at him. Lu Ten laughs, right, stupid question.
“Over the wall of the back gardens, there’s this stray catbird I’ve been visiting for a while now-“
Azula shoots to her feet and suddenly Lu Ten is being dragged away towards the walls by a little kid half his size. And really, that’s all it takes for him to gain another little sibling.
It’s been bothering Lu Ten for a while now. The bird voice flapping in his chest every time he thinks of his new siblings.
The way Azula toddles over dark, sharp wit on her tongue, jealous and distant reminds him of something he has no recollection of. The way he knew beneath her coldness there was a guarded warmth, a love for small things. Lu Ten knew of the careful, obsessive planning and calculating glint in Ty Lee’s too clever eyes and in Zuko’s brash words and fiery temper, the righteousness of little men and their blades. He knew little things too. Favorite colors and which foods they hate and how much of the bed they took up-
The protectiveness he feels over the three of them is almost familiar and comforting enough to make him forget how sad it makes him.
It also makes him forget when he comes of age.
Now, Lu Ten has always known that around this time, his father himself had begun his military in the colonies. He knew that. Lu Ten had been using escrima for a while now. His father had taught him how. They’d gone over Go and calligraphy and battle tactics as much as they did tea and birds and poetry. It was harmless. A game.
Until it wasn’t.
His father smiles when he tells Lu Ten about the deployment. He almost doesn’t say anything as his father chatters about how Admiral Kenji would see them out, how he wanted to stop by the forgery to exchange his escrima for something deadlier. Something sharper and more permanent. Lu Ten finally chokes his words out, barely above a whisper.
The birdcage of his ribs thumps incessantly. “We shouldn’t go.”
His father sighs, not quite understanding the weight of his words. “I know, the night before my own deployment was a scary one-“
Lu Ten’s voice cracks. “No, Father, I meant-“
The general perks up at that address. Lu Ten shakes his head, regret already filling his lungs. “Dad. We shouldn’t be doing this. We-“
Lu Ten’s breath shudders rapidly. “I don’t want it. I don’t- can’t we just stay here forever? Watch the komoritori?”
There’s this look on his fathers face. And something about it just solidifies a distant memory in his mind of that same look happening so many times before. Even though he knows, he knows this father has never looked at him like that before this night. That accusing and disappointed look in his eye. Of not being tempered by the violence like he was, only changed- and changed for the worse. Not liking what he was becoming. “Lu Ten. I don’t understand. I thought-”
That’s not his name. But it is. Lu Ten- whoever the bird in his chest was, he didn’t know. But something was breaking. He could feel it, he can feel it-
Lu Ten doesn’t quite know when he starts running, but he knows it’s too late to stop. His feet, filled with memory, bring him to the gardens once more and his body has him climbing before his head can catch up.
Everything begins to unravel in knotted twists of his stomach. Reconciling the indulgent father who let him climb to the highest point of any place, who learned the tea ceremonies and bird names when his mother wasn’t there anymore- not the general who would have him by his side in a battlefield. Lu Ten wondered if he should feel grateful his father trusted him so much, but really, all he felt was dread.
It feels too familiar. That’s what unsettles Lu Ten. He knows that all he’s ever known in this life was the softness of his father, even when he went out into the war leaving him and his mother to wait in a military base for his return. He never brought the war home with him.
It’s starting to feel different these days as the navy ships roll back into Caldera every few weeks, the softness of his father hardens to rock, is tempered and sharpened by flame. Lu Ten had seen the cold stares that hadn’t quite softened before he made it through the door a few times before. And he didn’t want it. He didn’t.
Lu Ten loves his father. He knows his father loves him. But he knows in someway, the general loves the war and the war loves him more. He wondered how much love would be enough to change his mind.
Some part of Lu Ten was still his father’s child, that stubborn, yet kind, fire-bright noble boy living in the Earth Kingdom colonies browned in a field’s sun. The father whose hands were always warmed by a teapot in the nights. His voice, a filled cup of jasmine and honey, metaphor and wisdom. The one letting him sling from his arms, watching him in the trees carried by light air, being called little komoritori from his voice nearby.
Little batbird. But that was wrong wasn't it?
Another part of Lu Ten knows the canopies of bright red top tents, of powdered handlebars. Knows the reason why he whispered of the circus and its lights and its freedom to the little Ty sister. There are foggy ghosts of dark haired and fair eyed brothers fluttering in circles around his head. Something like a voice in his ear, telling him with sureness where to go, almost as if she knows the future. A prophet- no, oracle. The way he knows how to do handsprings and backflips and how to land quietly on his feet and how to throw an oddly shaped blade and not be caught. The certainty in the dark shape of a father, a myth and man altogether. A bat and his birds.
The part of Lu Ten that knows the title little batbird feels so close and yet still so wrong at times.
In the end, Lu Ten isn’t quite sure when he wakes. Before the fall, kissed by the wind as he drops through air- or after. On the ground. It would make sense if it were the latter, something in Lu Ten knows exactly how easy it is for a flying creature to fall.
What komoritori know though is that at the very zenith of the palace’s tallest ginkgo tree, a boy slips, blinking awake, remembering he’d been born on the first day of spring, not summer. When the son hits the earth of a land he hadn’t been born into the first time around, he realizes why the tea has never tasted quite right.
On the first day of spring, Lu Ten falls for the first time in this new life. A batbird sings somewhere across space and time as a Robin rises from his ashes.
Dick Grayson wakes up crowded by the faces of three, annoying little brothers.
“What the hell, Grayson? What was that? Why did you fall? You never fall, you imebecile-“ Oh, that is definitely Damian.
Tim, he assumes, now that he thinks back to the photorealistic drawings, hisses next to him. “Azula! Watch the names- he still has no clue-“
Jason’s voice is just garbled panicked screaming, which is on brand for the angry little kid with the dual dao that he knows and his passionate little wing.
Sighing, Dick speaks before they start killing each other over his body. “I guess in every life you all turn out to be extraordinary little shits, huh.”
Silence.
Damian, in all his dry annoyance speaks first. “Dear gods, I thought you’d never snap out of it, Grayson.”
Dick wasn’t sure how he didn’t given all the blatant hints and references to their past lives they’d said to him. “How did you guys even know I was me?”
As he is helped up by Tim, Jason rolls his eyes. “Only you would try to adopt random kids right off the bat.”
Tim shrugs. “I actually thought it was the constant acrobatics, your sudden liking to escrima, your obsession with batbirds-“
Dick coughed and waved a hand. “Okay, okay, I get it. I’m obvious.”
He could tell they were all relived by the way they all had some sort of physical touch on him. Damian pokes his temple, which still aches from his fall. To his surprise, his body didn’t hurt all that much given the large pile of leaves at the base of the tree and how many branches he’d tumbled through on the way down. Lucky. “Hm. Psychological recalibration. Who would have thought?”
Tim frowns. “No, it wouldn’t have been the fall. All of our awakenings happened for a reason.”
Dick slumps, mourning all the lost time. “Wait, how long have you all remembered?”
Jason huffs, crossing his arms. “…Damian was the first.”
Said brother shrugs, suddenly invested in his fingernail structure. “Ozai. Training became grueling when he realized my exquisite skill set.”
Jason and Tim roll their eyes but say nothing. Damian continues on quieter. “It felt like I was back with them I guess. I woke up rather quickly after that.”
Jason grunts out his own explanation as if someone was pulling teeth. “An assassination attempt. Got kidnapped and that shit felt Joker all over again. Woke up and kicked the guy's ass. Ozai cared as much as B did, so.”
Tim coughed, sensing it was his turn during this ‘Talk To Dickiebird About Our Feelings Session’. All their appointments had been delayed a decade or so. It was a little awkward. Very. Sue them, reincarnation wasn't exactly your run of the mill, villain of the week type of gig. “My sisters, the older ones were… especially jealous.”
Jason refuses to look anyone in the eyes as Tim mumbles on. “One tried to kill me as a kid. And well. You guys get why that would do the trick.”
It’s surprising that Dick gets that much out of all of them but he guesses without him around, there was only each other to talk to. And Dick knew they’d all rather fight to the death that give an inch to each other.
Dick offers his own experience with a surprising ease. Something about the vanishing of the constant headache he had every time he thought about them probably helped. And the current one he had from falling out of a tree. “It was a lot of things for me, I guess. It wasn’t so much the physical side but just… falling in general. Thought of my parents.”
He shakes his head and pushes back the memory. “And my dad, my current one, is pulling a Bruce right now. He…” Dick rubs at his sternum, expecting the thick leather bat emblem to cut back up at him. All he feels are the layers of his silk robes. “He wants to bring me. Out there. In the war. But I-“
He knows it probably takes Zuko- Jason, his little wing Jason— everything in his body to not crow about it. Dick knows it probably smarts that Jason wouldn’t outrun the tenuous relationship with yet another father. But he also probably realizes the precipice Dick now stands on waiting to see what his own father of now would choose. The good fight or his son.
Dick loved his fathers. Blood had never meant anything to him, to any of his family. Love was always a choice they made, purposefully, even if it was through kicking and clawing.
But he would never be made into a soldier again. Never again.
Everyone goes silent at that until tiny, gremlin baby bat Damian pipes up, a dark and amused look in his eyes. “Well. We could always take your advice.”
Tim, still his baby bird, smiles at that, eyes reflecting his dastardly plans. “Join the circus. Take up a bat mantle again and become the Flying Batbirds or something.”
Jason, his Jason, his little wing, shrugged and offered another route. “Or Freedom Fighters. I’ve heard stories from the docks… they don’t seem too far off from what we used to do.”
They all seemed to have thought long and hard about this. Despite the cold night time air, Dick felt warm to be back their presence, even more so with all his memories intact. It unsettled him that he hadn't been able to discern the empty space until he had them back. God, he had missed them so much.
“Why did you all never do those things?”
They all stare at him like he's suddenly turned into a sea slug. Jason glares at him like he wants to hit him as he says, “We were waiting for you, dumbass.”
“Why didn’t you try to, like-“ Dick mimes hitting himself in the head. “Jolt my memory?”
Tim rubs his eyes, his infinite tiredness apparently having crossed dimensions. “Disregarding the fact that would probably just give you brain damage- if we wanted to jolt your memory we would have just told you about our past lives. We tried pressing it but…”
Jason deadpans. “You got this blank look every time. It was fucking creepy.”
Dick nods vaguely, remembering his brief moments wondering if he was some sort of amnesiac. And suddenly there’s a question that surfaces in his head that stops him in his track. “…What if I never remembered?”
Damian interrupts, voice hard and unwavering. “Then we wait forever. You were happy here. We didn’t want to take that from you.”
Dick starts to feel this burning lump in his throat and Damian gets this wide eyed disgusted look on his face so he boulders on. “I don’t think you’ve noticed but you were really clingy. It was sort of bothersome how happy, go lucky- don’t you dare cry, Grayson, that’s disgusting-“
Dick scrubs as his eyes, laughing at the trio of panicked, awkward faces. “Okay. Okay. Well, whatever we do, we’ll go together.”
They all nod and Dick decides to stop running away now that he has something to run to. “How about we all go meet our new dad?”
That gets an exasperated, yet unsurprised look from all three of them. Oh, he had missed these little shits so much.
His father obviously freaks out when he comes stumbling back into their rooms covered in little cuts and bruises. “What happened?”
Dick scratches the back of his head- that aches though so he stops midway through and tries for a smile. “I, uh, fell from a tree?”
His father’s face holds no disappointment that he’d feared he would see. Only worry. The love. And suddenly Dick feels utterly ridiculous for this whole fiasco.
It doesn't surprise him that in the next moment he's being enveloped in a hug. His father was rather good at those. Dick closes his eyes, soaking in finally being whole- in his father's arms, his brothers just a few seconds away. A whisper from above his ear echoes gently. “I was wrong. I’ve never been happier here. Never happier than I was with you. You don't have to if you don't want to. I would never take this from you.”
There’s a hope that flutters dangerously in his chest. He would’ve loathed running away again. Hated it. But something is beginning here, not ending. “So, I’m not going?”
“No.” His father’s arms are warm. “No, I won’t either.”
Dick’s eyes water and he remembers just how soft it was to be loved by a father in this life and the one before. “But-“
Dick is squeezed tighter. “My son comes first. You will always come first to me.”
At that, there is a noise from the entrance of the room where his three brothers stand having an allergic reaction to all the emotions in the room. Jason’s eyes are guarded but he looks up at Iroh without hostility. “I like the sound of that, old man. You better not be lying to Dickiebird or I’m taking your crown myself.”
Tim and Damian’s glares say the exact same thing with less words and threats. His father, bless him, takes it all in full stride. Brushing away a few loose strands from his hair, he ushers them all in and whispers conspiratorial to Dick when they all shuffle their feet and mumble about finding him in the gardens.
“I’m glad you found companionship in your cousins, my little komoritori.”
And despite wanting to not rock the boat any further tonight, Dick can’t let that go. “Not cousins.”
Dick looked toward the three of them sitting at a low table near the brazier, arguing and pushing at each other in what they probably thought were ‘inside voices’. “They’re my brothers.”
“Ah. I see.” His father smiles. “Well, I’ve always wanted more children.”
After all, how did that cheesy saying go? Birds of a feather stick together? Well, Dick thought, batbirds did anyway.