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salparadiselost · 5 months

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Do you have any headcanons or blurbs about To Hear, To See, To Smile by chance? I love abomination batboys so much🥺

I have this blurb. It may show up as a beginning of a story one day. Me and @jube514 were actually writing it out for a bit, but we kinda lost the plot. I do think the lore implications are fun though. IDK if it will ever fully develop, but this is the intro scene. -----

Bruce ambles behind his pack of children, slowly bringing up the rear in their little journey to the Gotham Museum of Science & History. It’s the middle of a day on a weekday, timed exactly to when the museum would be the least busy.

And yet, there’s still some people milling about, floating through exhibits, and subtly avoiding his sons as they tear through centuries of humanity.

“I want to do the Egypt section next,” Dick gripes as his siblings drag him in the exact opposite direction of the Egypt section. They had already done South America, Africa, only part of Asia, and had just finished up with the “The Fight for a Better America: The Wake of the Civil War”. Now they were traveling out of the Americas more towards the European section.

“We will get to Egypt, Dickie,” Jason growled, shoving Dick with a shoulder. “But that’s on the entire other side of the museum. It’s going to be our last stop.”

“Well, it could have been done sooner if someone hadn’t wanted to look at the most depressing photos I’ve ever seen.”

Jason’s head reared back and Bruce rolled his eyes. He hoped his boys would eventually grow out of the phase where their favourite sibling bonding activity was bickering with each other.

Tim freezes as they enter the next exhibit of the museum, making Dick and Jason abruptly end their argument about ‘The Dead of Antietam’ to avoid almost slamming into him.

“Move it, Timbo,” Jason growls, the sound harsher than was actually meant. His human form flickers for a second (too wide a maw, too many teeth), but Jason brings it under control with practiced ease and only a twitch of his glamored-on nose. If his puppyish ears were out, they would be flat against his skull.

They knew that they needed to be very solidly human while they were in public places nowadays. Bruce didn’t want any threats made against them, more afraid of his boys getting hurt than saving the sanity of the general public to be honest. The man already had too many close calls with one of his boys flickering and resulting in some instinct-crazed person deciding they would try to be a hero by attacking his sons.

They’re called many names by many cultures– engkanto, fae, yōkai– but the scientific name of what they are in papers is H. admonition solitaria. God’s lonely rebuke.

There are several theories on how the etymology went from ‘admonition’ to ‘abominations’, but that’s what they’re called colloquially nowadays. The wretched. Monsters. Abominations.

No matter what they are called, the reaction they get has always been the same, often triggering the same primal instinct to hurt, maim, kill, on humans.

These creatures drove regular people to do things they normally wouldn’t do– like maybe pull a knife on a ten-year-old’s throat as he held his father’s hand, or attempt to slam a small teen into the wall while they waited for ice cream. The affected humans never quite remembered why they had attacked the child — only that there was something deeply, inherently, wrong with the boys to receive such an attack.

It was a wrong that followed them from the very start. They could never quite shake it off. It drove them to cry into comfort, to home– to Bruce’s shoulder as he held their same shaking body and tried desperately to calm away the scare.

It made public outings dangerous, but Bruce wouldn’t lock his boys up in the Manor, even if it was the safest option. All three of them had been trapped for too much time in their short lives; Bruce wasn’t willing to be another jailer.

Hence, the visit to Gotham’s Science & History Museum. But only with certain parameters, of Bruce being right by their sides, and only in the middle of the day on a Wednesday when foot traffic would be at its lowest.

Dick sighs and pushes Jason to the side so they could walk around Tim.

“Come on,” Dick tells his younger brothers gently, his eyes crinkling at the corners with his smile. “You don’t want Bruce to leave you behind, do you?”

Bruce nearly scoffs at the implication.

As if he would ever abandon any one of his children.

Jason stalks his way over to Bruce’s side, ignoring the way the people move away from him out of instinct. There weren’t any indications the fellow museum-goers even register he was there, just that there’s something wrong in the air and they have to scuttle outwards to the edges of the exhibit as soon as they can.

Most people are like that– like they could sense the (many, so, so many) teeth even if they could not see them.

Soon, only Bruce, his children, and the silent paintings of the exhibit remained in the room.

Jason makes his way to Bruce’s side, unconsciously bumping their sides together in a greeting that was more creature than human, but also a habit of Jason’s. Bruce found it to be wildly endearing.

Despite how human all of them looked, they always carried some bits of their creature bodies.

Dick is tactile as a bird, and even more so when he has a pair of hands. He’s constantly touching, grooming, or checking that one of his siblings is there next to him.

He always listens, too. Of course, he always listened– is listening– but that was because of his species, with their (way too many) ears. Dick, as a constantly talking and touching brother, is because of his personality– someone who’s unlearning touch as something that hurts, that touch can be soft and caring, after all these years.

Jason, although he’s a wolf only in the vaguest sense, is prone to leaning up on his ‘pack’ and didn’t hesitate to show his teeth in a smirk or a (wide, too wide set) grin. Bruce knows that despite his comfort, the boy still fought to keep some of his more canine growls out of his throat.

(Or, especially when he had been younger, to keep himself from biting visiting aristocrats who had patted his head and had complimented him on ‘developing manners despite being born in that horrid Alley’.)

Tim showed his alternative form in very different ways, unlike his brothers. He wasn’t bound to an animal (the way teeths were wolves and ears were birds), as his shadowy form was more fluid than form. He could be anything if he wanted to. Small or large. Solid as stone or as ever-changing as water.

He showed he was something more by his stares and that, when he looked at you, you were always sure that (many, many more oh my god there’s too many) eyes looked back.

A smile too wide, eyes too knowing, a face too distorted.

“Tim, what’s wrong?” The concern in Dick’s voice jolts Bruce out of his own head and makes him look toward their youngest.

Tim is still standing in the entryway, eyes wide and fixed upon the exhibit stand in the middle of the room.

For the first time, Bruce truly looks at it.

It’s a crystal ball but with some kind of dark fluid suspended in the middle. The ball was on a moving pedestal that constantly turned it, making the dark fluid swirl almost hypnotically in the sphere.

He guessed it was a display for ferrofluid, a magnetic fluid that was reacting to whatever charge was in the pedestal. A metallic ink that was constantly fleeing from the magnet underneath it.

“Tim?” He asks, looking back toward his son. Dick’s face is growing more concerned by the second and even Jason began to shuffle at Bruce’s side anxiously.

Tim shudders, eyes snapping towards Bruce. For a second, just a second, he looks scared and deeply unsettled in a way that inevitably puts Bruce on edge. Then, he schools his features and forces himself to look calmer.

Bruce doesn’t doubt that Dick could hear Tim’s quicker heartbeat and that Jason could taste the sour tang of his discomfort.

“I… It’s fine. I’m being stupid,” Tim mutters, edging into the room like he thought the exhibit was going to bite him.

It set off all the alarm bells in Bruce’s head.

It reminds him of the crying little boy in the Drake Manor who had constantly insisted that he was fine despite being blindfolded and locked alone in a room. Bruce still can’t stop the bile that rises to his throat when he thinks about the iron marks on Tim’s scarred skin.

Tim is scared. Bruce didn’t need to listen or taste to know that. Something is scaring Tim.

But what, and most importantly, why?

His eyes went back to the crystal ball and the churning fluid within it.

Was it…

“Hi!” A bright voice interrupts and all of their attentions snaps toward the chirpy museum volunteer that bounces into the room. “I saw you were interested in the crystal ball. Do you have any questions?”

Bruce is just about to say ‘no, thank you’, but Tim cuts in before he could.

“Yes,” Tim says, walking forward toward the crystal ball. He gives her a handsome gala smile. One that said Martha’s Vineyard summers and expensive polo shirts tucked into even more expensive jeans. Bruce could see it cracking at the edges, shadows flickering at the seams of his mouth. “What is it exactly? What’s in it?”

“Of course!” She replies, merrily walking towards the exhibit. She holds her arms out like she’s presenting a show rather than some display case.

“This is a crystal ball from the 12th century and we estimate its origin to be Romania, however this type of object is known to travel around so it’s impossible to know for sure. Crystal balls, like this one, were used in gypsy fortune telling—“ Bruce catches Dick’s flinch at the slur and the way he edges away from the volunteer and back towards Bruce and Jason “—and it traveled with them in their caravans so they could use them to predict the future for customers. This one, in particular, is a beautiful specimen and on loan from Rome.”

Tim nods along with the explanation, but his pinched look doesn’t waver. “And the inside?”

Her smile gets impossibly wider. “That’s the most interesting part. Nobody knows for sure and we’re hesitant to crack a ball open because they are so rare, but legend says that the black fluid is Seer blood and bone. The fortune tellers taught that it helped them see into the future and into other realms.”

Bruce’s breath catches in his chest and he watches Tim’s face pale.

“Seer? Like an– like an abomination?” His voice trips up on the last word. The volunteer’s voice only gets more excited.

“Yes, the gypsies were quite adept in hunting down the seeing abominations. They were well known across Europe for their prowess and the little villages would hire them to take care of a seeing Abomination if they had one lurking about. The people were said to train owls to hunt them.”

“Owls?” It was Dick who asks this time.

“Yeah, owls! Although, it’s just a legend because scientists don’t know how they possibly could have trained any birds given their technology. Any modern attempts have failed to replicate any of them and it’s not like they were prioritizing making manuals when they had monsters to hunt.

The hunting owls of the gypsies are common figures in European myths, though. They are said to have been great listeners and able to follow any of their trainers’ commands. They were used primarily to hunt Seeing abominations, but could also be used to bring down deer and boars. The gypsies treasured them and were said to sleep with them in their caravans, treating them almost like they were their children. Many European kings tried to steal the owls from them, but… well let’s just say it never ended up good for the Kings.”

Her smile turns a little dark, but then suddenly, it brightens.

“Do you have any more questions?”

#kay speaks #kay writes #dick grayson #jason todd #tim drake #abomination au #to hear

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