Gifts From the Sea [Batfam Bingo 2019: AU: Zoo] - Part 24 (rough draft)
A Batman fanfic by Raberba girl
A/N: Warning for irreverent/self-deprecating reference to suicidal thoughts and depression.
o.o.o
Bruce woke up late in the morning feeling slow and tired, even after a long night's sleep. He lay in bed for nearly an hour, then dragged himself to the kitchen for coffee. He sipped at it, abandoned the rest, then trudged outside to watch the waves, the stupid ocean that had given him both the greatest joys and the greatest pain of his life. The sea was the true mother of his sons, and she was a jealous parent, wanting them all to herself. 'Screw you,' he thought dully as he looked out at the horizon.
He sighed and descended the porch steps, his head hanging, then came to a stop at the bottom, finally realizing that the sand was...moving. Bits of it kept twitching and curling a little like it was alive.
Bruce frowned and crouched down to get a better look. There were...tendrils, thick ones, camouflaged against the sand. The strips of rubbery flesh transitioned into pale, flaking skin. Limbs. And farthest away, two dull eyes, watching him in fear and resignation from the shadows under the porch steps.
"Oh my...God." Bruce, suddenly shaking and on high alert, fumbled in mer-sign, "Safe, quiet, safe." He scrambled around to the other side and reached gingerly under the strange mer's armpits, drawing them out into the open as gently as possible.
The little mer started to breathe rapidly, gills frantically working, tentacles twitching and curling more urgently.
The child's skin was as dry as a human's, and littered with abrasions.
"Oh my God...! Okay- Okay, kiddo, it's okay, I'm going to pick you up now. I won't hurt you." Bruce, with difficulty because the octopus-mer's center of gravity was so weird, hefted the child into his arms. The little creature started shivering, a dry tentacle slowly curling around Bruce's leg. "Okay, kid, okay, we're going, let's get you into some water, kiddo, let's get you some water..."
Bruce rushed to the back of the house and set the little octo-mer into the pool, which was already filled with saltwater because it had basically been Dick's bed. The child sank and lay at the bottom, tentacles drifting.
Bruce, despite having raised two children who could breathe underwater, nevertheless felt panicked and submerged himself, laying a hand on the mer's chest until he was sure it was rising and falling in a steady rhythm. Then he surfaced, retrieved his phone, and called the king of Atlantis.
"ARTHUR. I FOUND AN OCTOPUS CHILD DYING UNDER MY PORCH STEPS; WHAT DO I DO."
Less than ten minutes later, Arthur and Mera were rushing up the beach. They jumped into the pool without pausing to speak to Bruce, and he could see them descending to where the strange mer lay.
The child, who had been still until now, finally moved. Bruce could see their shape under the water, moving away from the Atlanteans. As Bruce was frowning, trying to figure out what that meant, a trembling tentacle tip rose up, felt around, and latched onto Bruce's leg. The rest of the creature slowly followed until the little mer was shaking in Bruce's lap, five tentacles clinging to him tightly enough to bruise, the three remaining tentacles sweeping continuously through the water like sentries. One trembling hand clutched Bruce's shirt; the other felt across the deck, shying away from the unfamiliar surface.
The Atlanteans had surfaced and were staring. "They're almost legend even for us," Mera said faintly. "We thought they'd gone extinct."
"We're not gonna hurt you, kiddo," Arthur crooned.
Apparently unconvinced, the child started trying to find a way into Bruce's shirt. They had not made eye contact with any of the adults at any point, despite seeming to be keenly aware of their presences.
"Why do they trust me?" Bruce wondered in bewilderment, unbuttoning his shirt to give the child easier access and then re-buttoning it over the mer's small body. The child, now thinking themself safe and hidden, had finally gone still again except for the three slowly sweeping tentacles. "I'm a human."
"Hell if I know," Arthur sighed. "What happened, Bruce?"
"I don't know! I was just coming outside and found them. Under my porch, extremely dehydrated." Now reminded, Bruce, awkward because of his load, slipped into the pool so the mer would be submerged again. "Did they crawl up from the sea? I didn't have a chance to check for a trail."
"He's male, by the way," Mera said. Judging by Arthur's expression, he hadn't been able to tell any more than Bruce had.
Investigation revealed that the merboy did, indeed, seem to have emerged from the ocean, headed straight for the house, and explored a bit before retreating under the steps.
"This is not normal," Mera stated. Two little eyes, gazing out from Bruce's collar, abruptly retreated deeper into the shirt as she stared. "This is unheard of. Octo-mer hide even from us, they never go anywhere near the surface. Yet it's almost like he..."
"Sought me out?" Bruce suggested quietly. He was wet and cold from standing in the unheated pool for so long and sheltering the creature right against his body, but Bruce's concern and fascination dulled the discomfort.
"I wonder if he's been watching you," Arthur remarked, peering into the collar. Bruce winced as the mer forced his way around to the back of the shirt to escape scrutiny. The garment was being mercilessly stretched and ruined. "If he's seen firsthand how you treated Dick and-"
"I know," Bruce snapped, not wanting to hear his murdered son's name spoken so casually. "He might have...known to expect good care." Though the merboy must have been absent these past few weeks, to have missed the wreck Bruce was in the wake of what had happened to Jason. "Do octo-mer need parents? I don't think actual octopuses do."
"I am under the impression that adults do not stay long to raise their young," Mera said, "but we know almost nothing about them that has been scientifically proven."
The Atlanteans soon left to consult some experts, sensing that they weren't helping much even though Bruce was glad to have had someone around to take the edge off his panic. Once he and his new charge were alone again, the boy cautiously ventured out of the shirt. He stuck close to Bruce's feet for a while, clinging as he looked around the pool for threats.
Finally convinced there were none, the little mer climbed up Bruce's body and cautiously emerged from the water. They stared at each other for a while, then the child reached up to rest a single fingertip on Bruce's face.
"My name is Bruce," Bruce said softly.
The mer hissed air between his teeth that sounded like a voiceless approximation: "Hhoo."
"Bruce."
"...P'sss," he tried again.
"Can you speak?" Bruce murmured. Of course the mer couldn't answer, and he wasn't about to stick a mirror down the kid's throat to check for vocal cords, so he almost immediately lost interest in the question. In fact, now that the adrenaline was dying down, he was kind of losing interest in everything. "...Well. Let's get you back home, kiddo."
Carrying the little octo-mer was rather awkward. The kid didn't have much of either a butt or solid body mass beneath the waist, so Bruce basically had to wrap his arms around the kid's chest like a child with a cat. The mer's tentacles immediately latched tightly onto him, making it hard to walk, too. "For God's sake..." Bruce went through the long, painstaking process of peeling the kid off him and back into the pool again, then went to look for a wagon. When he came back, he found that the mer had left the pool and was now studying the glass of the back door in fascination, tapping a fingernail against one of the panes and squelching tentacle suckers across it.
"All right, kid, come on." He picked up the awkward bundle of damp, rubbery octo-mer and gently dumped him in the wagon. "All right, let's go." He'd only taken a few steps when the wagon suddenly lurched to a stop. There were thumping sounds and the sensation of rapid weight distribution. Bruce looked back and was aghast to find a tentacle wedged between one of the wheels and the underside of the wagon, the little mer writhing and thrashing in silent agony.
"Oh my G-!" Bruce quickly freed the tentacle and the mer whipped it close, clutching the injury with both hands and curling over it. The remaining tentacles were either waving or clutching onto the wagon and Bruce's arm in distress. "You need to keep your limbs clear of the wheels, do you understand? Otherwise, they'll get caught."
A few steps later, it happened again. The child, clutching two tentacles now, peered up at Bruce miserably.
Bruce gritted his teeth, then yanked off his shirt and, with some difficulty, gathered all the tentacles together. He used his shirt to tie them all together, then straightened up. The mer stared at his bound limbs, the ends wriggling madly, then up at Bruce. His expression was mostly unchanged, but his teeth were obviously gritted, and then he hissed. One hand was working along the edge of the wagon, the other picking at the shirt.
"I'll take it off when we get to the water," Bruce snapped.
Shortly afterward, the wagon jerked to a stop again. Bruce closed his eyes for a second, then looked back. The mer was staring at his own hand, which was now scratched. His tentacles, though still bound, were writhing hard, and the shirt was already coming loose.
"All right. Look." Bruce grabbed a piece of driftwood, poked it demonstratively at the wheel, then tossed it in the wagon. The mer, whose entire body had, disconcertingly, gone the same bright red color as the wagon, cautiously touched it. "If you have to go poking at dangerous things, use something other than your own body parts."
When he set off again, he could feel the renewed obstructions, but this time he could tell from the feel and the sound that they weren't flesh, so he just powered through. He wondered how the kid was able to keep poking at the wheel when it seemed like there should have been enough force to yank the wood out of his hands. When Bruce reached the water's edge, he looked back just in time to see the mer reaching out with a tentacle to scoop up the dropped piece of driftwood and poke it at one of the front wagon wheels again. The shirt lay limply under the boy's freed limbs.
Bruce sighed once more, then reached to pick up the child, who tightly latched onto him. He waded out about waist-deep and worked on detaching the mer again, but every time he freed himself from one or two limbs, others would take their place.
"Kid, I need you to go home. Go away." He signed it in Dick's language and also made expressive gestures, but the boy's face remained blank. He tried just walking back to the house, but the boy wouldn't let go, and he couldn't in good conscience keep letting a child who looked about seven or eight years old literally drag across the sand after him. He stopped and breathed deeply for a while, trying to rein in his temper.
He got distracted because the kid was climbing up him again, looking ridiculous doing it in open air rather than water. It took several minutes for Bruce to even grasp the boy and work him into a position where he could hold him fairly comfortably. The boy stared back at him, hands resting on his shoulders, two tentacles wrapped tightly around his legs and two more around his arms and another exploring his hair and the rest fiddling with beach debris.
"I don't want you. You need to go home," Bruce said, slowly and clearly.
The boy started signing in an elaborate language Bruce didn't recognize, some of his tentacles gesturing as purposefully as hands. All Bruce got out of it was his name, "P'sss," exhaled a few times amidst the child's other voiceless whispers. The boy was squinting in the morning sunlight.
Bruce sighed deeply and decided to wait until the creature was asleep before attempting to get rid of him again. He carried the octo-mer back to the house, dragging the empty wagon after him, and only once they were inside did the mer finally release him, slithering to the floor and looking around in wonder.
"Here." Bruce fetched some of Dick's old toys, feeling a pang at the reminder of one of his lost sons, and offered them to the octo-mer. The boy took them and examined them in fascination.
Bruce brought in a kiddie pool and filled it with saltwater, then gestured. "If you get too dry or you get tired, you can climb in here and rest. I've used up my energy quota for today, so I'm going to sleep, probably for hours, because I lost my reasons for living and I can't deal with you right now." He paused, then went around to cover up all the electrical outlets and block off the stairs and shut all the doors except the ones that led out to the pool and the beach. With any luck, the kid would get bored and be gone by the time Bruce woke up again.
"Okay." In the living room again, Bruce put his hands on his hips. The child, still fiddling with the toys, stared up at him. "Okay," Bruce said again. "Good night. Good morning. It's all the same to me, these days." He lay down on the couch and fell asleep.
TBC
Author's notes: Tim (and Jason) was originally going to be a regular merboy like Dick, but then Breezy did some sketches for this AU and she made each Batkid a different species of mer, and Tim was an octopus which I thought was absolutely perfect, so I changed my version to match. :)
The plural of "octopus" is "octopuses." I messed up and used "octopi" in an earlier chapter, oops. X'D