Dolly Mixtures Musebox

Jason is stand-offish with Bruce and the other former Robins at the best of times, but they've all noticed him being more distant than usual recently. Bruce, of course, is fine to leave him alone and let him figure it out himself, but Dick doesn't want to leave it alone, he never does. As soon as he gets the full moon out the way he's going to get to the bottom of this.

It turns out he doesn't have to wait that long.

Dick's been a werewolf since he was a child, he was born that way, and back in those days full moon meant chains and cages or, if the schedule allowed, it meant the circus stopping as far from civilisation as possible so that he and his parents had room to run. Those full moons were always his favourites.

After his parents were killed it meant a special room in the batcave, at least until he got a little older and could seek out safe areas himself - parks where nobody went at night, places a wolf wouldn't be spotted and he wouldn't risk hurting anybody. He was still aware when he changed on a full moon, but he had far less control over his instincts, it was like being a passenger in his own body, only able to make suggestions and hope the wolf listened. He'd been six the first time he couldn't stop himself from killing a rabbit and he'd spent most of the next day in floods of tears - he can manage without crying these days, of course, but he still feels a little bad whenever a rabbit or a deer falls to the wolf's need to eat, no matter how much steak he tries to sate it with in the days leading up to the full moon.

He's never hurt a person and he hopes he never will.

He's also, in all his years, never seen another wolf in Gotham. It doesn't mean there aren't any, maybe they just spend their full moon elsewhere, but he's never so much as caught the scent of one before.

That night, he does - and it's familiar.

So he tracks the wolf, runs with it, goads it into playfights and races, anything to keep them entertained until the early hours of the morning when they're ready to flop into a pile of fur and sleep until dawn. Or, in Dick's case, until just before dawn, which is when he untangles himself and slips away, back to where he has his clothes stashed.

Once the sun has risen and he's back in human form, he goes back to his apartment for a change of clothes and a quick nap, and then around mid morning he's knocking at Jason's door with two coffees and a bag of breakfast food.

In hindsight, it had been pretty stupid to take that shortcut. Gotham's streets were pretty notoriously unsafe once the sun went down and an alley only really lit by the streetlights at either end? He'd really been asking for trouble. Truthfully, Dick had assumed he was far too well known for anybody to risk trying to hurt him - he hadn't counted on the fact that being so well known was exactly what was going to get him into trouble. Everybody knew his father had more than enough money for a ransom, after all.

He'd been aware of the people walking into the alley behind him, which was the first point that he'd thought maybe he hadn't made such a great life choice that evening. Maybe he should have just taken the cab rather than telling his friends his apartment wasn't that far away. When a couple others stepped in to block his path, he'd known he'd made the wrong choice, but by then it was too late.

Pain flashed through his skull and the world went dark.

When he came to he was in some kind of basement, by the looks of it, the back of his head throbbing and his arms stiff and sore from being cable-tied behind his back.

This was bad. This was very, very bad.