#at some point the LOA is going to watch utterly baffled

[absolutely-esme]

Monster!Tim Coraline AU Idea

This idea would not leave me alone.

It’s a cross between a meta!/magic!Tim au and a Coraline au.

Before I get into it, I feel like I should explain.  I was on a bit of an Eldritch!Batfamily and Cryptid!Batfamily kick.  Then I found a collection of supernatural Tim aus.  Then I stumbled across a Coraline au.  There’s probably also some inspiration in there from vampire au fics.

It didn’t really jell until the idea occurred to me of a scene where some frightened villain asks Tim “What kind of monster are you?” and Tim says “The hungry kind.”

...

The idea is that somewhere back along the way, Tim’s family tree includes some kind of supernatural creature which may or may not have been an eldritch entity.

The supernatural heritage allows Tim to acquire abilities from other entities he has defeated, and Gotham is absolutely full of the supernatural if you pay attention.

Of course, Tim’s power isn’t all sunshine and rainbows.  It actually comes packaged with some pretty nasty side effects.

One of those side effects is perpetual Hunger.  Tim is always Hungry.  There is no way to stop it.  He eats enough to stay healthy, but he still feels Hunger at all times.  Increasing his food intake will not help and will screw up his metabolism and cause him to need more for normal function.  If this was allowed to spiral out of control it could eventually reach a point where he was physically unable to eat the amount of food he needed to function and starved to death on a full stomach. 

Fixing it is stupid hard because this particular sort of magical inheritance is really fucking inconvenient.  And, of course, whatever is up with his biology also makes him insanely susceptible to addiction, so no coffee for him unless he wants caffeine withdrawal symptoms all the time for however long it takes to fix that.  The constant Hunger also makes it difficult to get enough sleep.  Have you ever tried to go to sleep on an empty stomach?  Not easy, was it?  Imagine that every night.

The Hunger is fairly central to the nature of the magic.  Whatever supernatural entity he’s descended from, it is the Hungry kind.  The ritual of defeating another supernatural entity, taking a bit of the defeated entity’s power, and incorporating it into himself serves as a sort of metaphorical devouring, (and metaphors matter more to magic than they do to normal biology).  That’s why he’s able to gain power and abilities from defeated foes. 

...

Tim’s relationship with his parents is complicated.  His supernatural heritage comes from his mother’s side of the family.  She did her best to teach him about it and how to cope with it, but a lot of knowledge was lost over the generations due to persecution forcing those like them into hiding more than once.  There may have been a few individuals who spiraled out of control and caused small-scale famines before losing their lives.  It only takes a few cases for people to decide that a specific category of people is simply not worth the risk of having around.  Janet always referred to herself and Tim (as well as anyone else sharing the condition) as “those afflicted with Gluttony.”  This is the closest they have to a name for the condition.

One of the important things Janet Drake teaches her son is to pursue his passions.  It is incredibly important for individuals like them to have things outside the self that they can draw satisfaction and fulfilment from, things that keep them going in the face of the relentless Hunger.  This is what leads Tim to his night-time photography of Gotham, and eventually to his fascination with the Bats. 

Janet’s passions are archeology and travel.  Unfortunately, traveling from dig site to dig site is not a particularly stable or safe environment to raise a child in.  She needs to do these things to remain in good health.  Without her external coping mechanisms, she could start spiraling.  If she starts spiraling, it might trigger her son to start spiraling too because children in their developmental years are delicate, and this type of hereditary magic is fucking inconvenient (there might be ways of managing things that make it easier to live with, but between the knowledge lost and the risks that come with experimentation, they don’t have much info on how anything works).  She comes home as much as she can without the risk of compromising both their health.

She also taught Tim how to calculate appropriate portion sizes based on nutritional data so as not to screw up his metabolism, and how to fix it if he does mess up.  She also stayed and managed the process the first time it happened because the process of returning the metabolism of one afflicted with Gluttony to normal after it’s gotten out of hand is difficult and unpleasant and Tim wasn’t old enough to handle it by himself.  The nanny that had overfed him hadn’t been malicious or unreasonable, she’d just been operating on the assumption that he had standard human biology.  It took months to get Tim healthy again.  It took several hefty bribes to keep things under wraps.  Janet doesn’t know if there are still people out there hunting their kind, but she’s not willing to risk it.

Janet may not know about the aspect of the family magic that lets them gain powers from defeating other entities.  It’s possible that she was holding off on explaining this until he was older and more ready for the responsibility of multiple superpowers.  It’s also possible that the knowledge got lost somewhere along the way and Janet didn’t discover it herself because she didn’t spend her childhood running around Gotham at night and was more the sort of person who would stay home and read when she had trouble sleeping.

...

Tim discovers his ability to gain abilities from defeating other supernatural things fairly early on.  The type of defeat can vary, but it has to be something of significance.  A fight will work for most, but there are other particular challenges that will work for specific cases.

The first things a young Tim is able to beat are these small things, invisible to most, that gain power from learning secrets.  What that power is used for, I couldn’t tell you.  They don’t seem to do much other than sneak around and learn secrets.  Tim doesn’t know if there’s a proper name for these things or not, but he calls them Secret Hunters.  They are absolutely everywhere in Gotham. 

Secret Hunters are invisible to most, but Tim is able to see them.  It might be because of his own supernatural nature, or it might be something else entirely.  If it’s hereditary it must have skipped his parents’ generation.  Neither of them seem to be able to see them.  Tim gains improved stealth and a sense for when something is hidden from catching Secret Hunters until they wise up and start avoiding him.  (Catching them works in place of a fight because secret hunters primarily operate on stealth and evasion.)

He can’t just magically know secrets, but he can tell when there is a secret.  (He still figured out Batman’s and Robin’s secret identities on his own merit.  The most this ability would have done is alert him to the fact that they had secret identities if that hadn’t already been obvious from the fact that they were wearing masks.)

He also gets various other abilities from other things he encounters while scrambling all over Gotham at night.  Nearly doesn’t get out of some of the scrapes he gets himself into.  He gains the ability to cut with his fingernails as if they were razors from something that nearly killed him.  He gains the ability to climb like a goat from a Jersey Devil.  Etc.

...

At some point, Tim is targeted by a beldam.  He doesn’t get the kind of warnings that Coraline does, but his ability to sense secrets lets him know that the Beldam is hiding something, and any child raised in any part of Gotham knows to be suspicious of things that seem too good to be true.  Tim doesn’t have a convenient seeing stone from the neighbor, but he does have the advantage of his own supernatural nature which the Beldam doesn’t know about.

Tim finds a button-eyed doll that looks like him after his parents leave on yet another trip, and thinks it’s a gift they meant to give him before leaving.  They do often bring interesting souvenirs.  It wouldn’t be at all unusual for them to find an artist who sews dolls to look like people and have one made based on pictures of him.  Later on, he discovers the key. 

This Beldam is older and more powerful than the one from Coraline.  She has more power and more past victims to work with, so she’s able to make a larger, more populated world. 

Oh by the way, I head-canon that the Other versions of people in the Other world are actually past victims of the Other Mother, remade and dressed up for whatever role she has them play.  The three ghosts were just the three most recent and not fully processed for use yet.  That’s why the Others are able to act against her sometimes (Other Wybie saving Coraline from the mirror, Other Father tossing the eye to Coraline) or say things she doesn’t want them too (Other Father says “so sharp you won’t feel a thing” and Other Mother kicks him under the table).

The Other Mother doesn’t know all that Tim knows, so the Other World has inconsistencies like Other Batman and Other Robin sitting across the table from Other Bruce and Other Jason.  She doesn’t know they’re the same people.  She just knows that they’re all important to Tim.  She also tries to tell him to “eat as much as he wants” when his real mother was the one to explain the dangers of attempting to eat to fullness for people with their condition.

There isn’t a cat to warn Tim but he doesn’t need it.  He can sense hidden intentions in everything, and he’s fully capable of uncovering the hidden secrets himself. 

Tim doesn’t have a cat, but he does have Other Robin, who might have been made from whatever remained of someone close to one of the people mirrored in the Other World made for Tim.  He doesn’t remember his life, but somehow he feels incredibly motivated to help a boy who cares dearly for whoever and is willing to let him know that they're living a good life out there in the real world.

Tim discovers the nature of the other world and sets out to free the souls trapped there.  He fights the Beldam will all the viciousness and desperation of someone who knows they’ve only got one shot.  He takes everything he can from this fight as he makes sure she won’t ever hurt anyone again.  He doesn’t stop until the beldam is well and truly dead.  Then he unravels Other Gotham and spills all of the souls out into the world where they can move on and rest.

This is how Tim learns to Sew.  He can’t make entire populated worlds like the beldam, but that’s mostly because he refuses to do what she did.  He can control things he’s made (though there’s limits on how much) and even see through buttons he’s sewn (onto cushions and such, he's not the Other Mother).  He also gets some minor illusory powers that let him make things look a bit brighter/nicer/cheerier than they are.  It takes quite some time before he’s comfortable with using these powers.  Trauma is a bitch like that.

Part of the reason this version of Tim was so desperate to do something about Batman losing it out of grief is because he already has Evil Batman trauma from Other Batman, and he doesn’t need that shit happening in real Gotham.

By this point Tim has a collection of powers that allow him to navigate the more dangerous parts of Gotham largely without fear.  Now he has to learn how to manage without using any that he isn’t one hundred percent certain he can sneak past Batman, which means he’ll have to divide his attention between learning from the training and not letting himself do things the supernatural way.  This is going to suck.

It does, in fact, suck.

Oh, it turns out some of the rogues are a bit supernatural.  He gains a bit of an intuitive understanding of the health of plants from Ivy.  He gains the ability to taste emotions from Scarecrow.  (Also, Johnathan Crane is a freaking weirdo, fear tastes like spoiled milk!)  The rogues with supernatural tendencies are freaking terrified of the new Robin because he always seems like he wants to freaking eat them.  The non-supernatural types don’t get it.

Eventually, Red hood breaks into Titan’s tower.  Tim, by this point, is very good at deciphering how supernatural entities work and is packing an extensive inventory of powers.  He realizes quickly that this is some kind of manipulative entity that feeds on rage and pain attached to an unwitting host.  When he realizes that the unknowing (and therefore unconsenting) host is Jason Todd, he tells the Lazarus Entity in no uncertain terms to give Jason back or perish.

Jason, who does not realize he has a malicious, mind-warping, supernatural parasite and believes there to be no one other than himself and Tim present, is understandably confused.

Tim decides that the Lazarus entity has had its chance and springs into action.

Jason is treated to the terrifying sight of just what Tim Drake is like when he’s not expending conscious effort on not being something out of a horror movie.  Suddenly he’s in the middle of a spider’s web and no matter how hard he tries to fight back everything around him is under the control of his opponent.  Furniture flies around on puppet strings.  Getting too close puts him in range of the freaking claws this kid apparently has!?  Trying to get away just leaves him caught in strings and the more he struggles the more entangled he becomes!  The new Robin is skittering and gliding around in a decidedly inhuman way. 

Jason honestly thinks he's going to die when he finds himself bound with Tim standing over him.  He passes out when Tim rips the Lazarus entity away from him and destroys it. 

Tim gains the ability to heal from defeating the Lazarus entity.

Jason is surprised and confused when he wakes up bundled in a handmade quilt with his head in Tim’s lap and a cool compress on his forehead, feeling sore but more well and whole than he has since before he died.

Jason later decides that his memories of the fight at Titans Tower must be some kind of weird fever dream caused by his body purging the last of the Lazarus Water from his system. It goes along with Tim's account of things.

According to Tim, Jason entered the tower, initiated a lock-down, and then collapsed on the floor. Then, Tim moved him closer to a wall where he was less likely to get stepped on than in the middle of the walkway and did his best to take care of him there because Jason was simply too large and heavy for him to carry all the way to the med bay by himself.

This is far more believable and less of a mind screw than what Jason remembers. Obviously this tiny, baby-faced kiddo who played nursemaid for a stranger who broke into the tower and now looks up at him with wide, starry eyes couldn't actually be the terrifying, predatory creature from the nightmare. It was all just a bad dream.

He's honestly glad he collapsed before he had time to do any harm. The poor kid will never have to know what Jason went there to do. Jason knows, though, and he'll do his damned best to make up for it. He may have flubbed first impressions, but he is going to be the best damn big brother that ever big brothered.

...

Tim might or might not go full on feral cryptid when Bruce is lost in the Timestream. I haven't decided. He will probably pick a fight with the Lazarus Pit much to the confusion and alarm of everyone around.

That’s all I’ve got so far.