Gifts From the Sea [Batfam Bingo 2019: AU: Zoo] - Part 27 (rough draft)
A Batman fanfic by Raberba girl
Tim really liked the suitcase. He figured out how to zip it closed from the inside, and even how to relocate it by pulling it along as he sat in the office chair. Bruce lined the inside with plastic, and Tim spent long hours in his shaded hiding place, curled up with wet blankets and toys.
Bruce tried to match his sleeping schedule to Tim's in hopes of giving the mer less chance to get into trouble while Bruce was busy being unconscious, which meant both of them slept at odd hours of the day and night. Tim grew calmer as he got more familiar with the house and the objects it contained - he always had at least a few tentacles occupied with fidget toys or other interesting objects, but the disaster messes started to die down. Bruce attempted to create a schedule and was diligent about teaching the mer both English and ASL.
About a week after the mer's arrival, Clark dropped in for a visit, tactfully wearing civilian clothes rather than his superhero suit. He let himself in and found his friend working on the computer. "Hey there, Bruce."
"You don't have to talk to me like I'm a skittish animal."
Clark smiled. When he spoke again, there was less calculated gentleness in his tone. "Just doing the weekly check-in, and-"
He paused. He looked around, then frowned at the closet. He began to approach, but Bruce hurried to get ahead of him. "Wait," Bruce said. He opened the closet door himself and knelt by the suitcase. "Tim, I'm coming in," he warned as if dealing with a normal child's bedroom. He unzipped about half the suitcase and peered in. "Hey, I'd like you to meet a friend of mine. His name is Clark, and he will not hurt you."
After a lot of coaxing, tentacles started to snake their way out of the suitcase, and then the entire creature emerged. Bruce swaddled the child in a sodden blanket and then stood up with him in his arms. "This is Tim."
"Ohhhh," Clark said softly, reaching out. A tentacle wrapped around his wrist and held it firmly, so he stopped reaching. He grinned at Bruce. "You found another one?"
"He's not mine," Bruce snapped. "I just can't get rid of him and he nearly wound up as seagull food when I tried to send him home."
There was such a stony lack of humor in his tone and body language that Clark went back to figurative tiptoeing. It was the first time in a long time he had seen his friend up and about in a normal way rather than curled up in bed or holing up like a caveman, but Bruce was clearly still far from usual self. Clark supposed he had the child to thank that Bruce had made any progress at all.
"It's nice to meet you, Tim," Clark said warmly.
"Arthur didn't say anything about him?"
Clark hesitated. "We...haven't really gotten together since..." He couldn't even explain why, since Bruce wasn't a real member of the League and Jason had had nothing to do with superheroes at all, but it had just...never felt right.
Bruce stared. "You haven't had any group meetings in all this time?"
Clark stared back. He hadn't expected Bruce to care. "Is that a problem?"
"You are the Justice League," Bruce growled. "People are depending on you. You need to be coordinating, keeping an eye on hot spots and practicing disaster response plans." He paused. "Do you even have disaster response plans?"
Clark couldn't think what to reply. It had never occurred to him to plan responses to potential disasters. He mostly just showed up when hostile aliens attacked and started punching, or zoomed around rescuing people during earthquakes and such.
Bruce groaned. "Who even let you all team up? You're terrible at this."
"I think you should join the League officially," Clark decided.
Bruce shook his head in disgust. "Right. Just give me a minute to come up with the stupidest superhero name I can think of and pick out the most obnoxiously-colored cape I can find."
"I'm serious. Even without a pseudonym or a costume, I think you could make some significant contributions to the team."
Bruce narrowed his eyes.
"I mean, having you on board would help with the criticism we've been getting about not having any normal humans, but I think you, specifically, would be a valuable member regardless of that."
Tim, having had ample time to study the newcomer, chose that moment to creep away from the shelter of Bruce's body, though he still had the blanket draped over him. Keeping two tentacles wrapped firmly around Bruce and another two around Clark's wrists, the mer softly patted his hand on the S symbol while other limbs investigated Clark's hair and pockets.
"Keep your cell phone away from him," Bruce said, grabbing it hurriedly. "Probably shouldn't let him have your keys, either; he won't want to give them up."
"Curious little thing, isn't he," Clark chuckled, taking the opportunity to snap a photo.
"If by that you mean a klepto hoarder who can't keep himself out of every nook and cranny he comes across, then yes."
Clark dipped his head to peer at the child's face under the blanket and informed him, "You're adorable."
"You, what?"
"This is Clark," Bruce introduced. "His name is 'Clark,' but we can pick something to call him with your fingers." He put together the letter C and the sign for 'glasses.' "How about that? 'Clark.' This man is 'Clark.' "
"...Clark. Good morning."
"Good morning, buddy!" Clark replied, signing as he spoke.
"This is 'hi,' " Bruce taught the mer. "You use it to greet people. 'Hi, Clark.' "
"Hi, Clark," Tim repeated, looking like he was nearing the end of his patience.
"What's your favorite toy, Tim?" Clark asked, continuing to sign.
Bruce set down Tim by the toy basket. The boy studied Clark's feet, but four of his tentacles immediately plunged into the basket and rummaged around, eventually withdrawing with loot.
"He definitely likes those measuring spoons," Bruce remarked.
"Measuring spoons good," Tim signed absently. "I want feet, please."
"Take your socks off, he wants to look at your feet."
Tim wasn't as fascinated by toes as Dick had been, but he still studied them carefully, particularly after he asked for Bruce's feet to compare. He pressed a pen to Clark's foot.
"He wants you to hold it with your toes," Bruce explained.
Clark complied, grinning in amusement. Tim watched intently for a while, then started poking at the pen. He jiggled it until Clark lost his grip and the pen tumbled down.
"Ugly, weak," Tim commented. "Why foot? Tentacle better." He easily scooped up the pen with one of his own lower limbs.
"Yeah, but we can walk with them," Bruce said dryly. "I challenge you to do that with your tentacles."
Tim, still holding the pen, crawled over to his office chair and climbed into it, then pulled himself in the direction of the kitchen.
"He seems pretty at home here," Clark remarked. "How long have you had him?"
"About a week."
"Do you need any help?"
"No," Bruce snapped.
"All right, Bruce," Clark said, raising his hands. He smiled a little. "You look good, though. I'm glad you're doing a bit better."
"I'm fine."
After Clark left, Bruce fetched the underwater camera he'd gotten for Tim and then collected the boy. "Come on, let's go swimming. You need some time in the actual ocean."
Bruce took them a decent distance offshore. Tim peered over the edge of the boat and made no move to enter the water, but he didn't resist when Bruce picked him up and dropped him overboard. Bruce then settled down to wait.
After an hour or two, the boat started to waver and then tip. Bruce opened his eyes and watched lazily as tentacles and hands gripped, slowly heaving up the rest of the mer's body. Tim finally got himself over the edge and flopped into the bottom of the boat, where he dropped the bag of trash he'd collected and made a beeline for his blanket. Once sufficiently hidden from the sun, he pushed his camera toward Bruce. "Bad or good?" he asked, his questioning look stiff and exaggerated. He finally understood that facial expressions were an important part of ASL, but it didn't come naturally to him at all.
"Good," Bruce said before even looking. It was important to praise children and build their self-esteem. "Your pictures are very good."
"Look!"
"Yes, yes, I'm looking." Bruce started viewing them, taking his time. They weren't far enough away from shore for there to be much of interest, but Tim had still managed to get some genuinely appealing photos of sunlight sifting through water, and clear images of passing fish and some sea plants. He'd also taken pictures of some of the garbage before he'd collected it.
"Humans suck," Bruce remarked, even as he marveled at how one of Tim's photos made an ethereally-drifting plastic bag look pretty. "Maybe you shouldn't be romanticizing the pollution." 'Nice job building up the child's self-esteem, Wayne.' "It's a good photo, though."
Tim had been watching him closely, keeping unusually still. He breathed out a series of loud exhalations that sounded faintly like Bruce's last sentence, then signed, "What?"
"This is 'pollution.' " Bruce pointed at the garbage, then the water. "It means trash where it's not supposed to be, like in the ocean. ...I don't know what the ASL is for 'romanticize.' "
Tim cocked his head.
"You hungry?"
"Fish. Good fish."
"All right. Let's go home and eat."
o.o.o
Bruce began teaching the mer how to read and write as well, and some basic math. Whenever they got tired of that, he looked up science experiments to do with children, which Tim seemed fascinated by.
After three weeks, Bruce began to feel restless for the first time since- ...for the first time in a while. He started itching to get off the island for a bit, then finally decided to see how the octopus child would handle venturing further into the human world. "Tim, we're going to go somewhere today."
"Go on boat, swim, take photos."
"No- Well, maybe we can do that later. But we're going to go into town today. 'Town.' I'm going to check my mail and buy some supplies."
"Mail boat."
"No, they won't come today. I called them yesterday and said I want to come pick it up myself."
Tim went still and narrowed his eyes at Bruce suspiciously.
"You will have to hide. There will be a lot of humans, and it's not good for them to see you. You will stay in the suitcase." Bruce paused. "Or you can stay here. Not in the house, because I know you'll wreck it if I leave you alone, but just offshore. Which one do you want, Tim? Do you want to stay here in the ocean alone for a couple of hours, or do you want to come with me where there are lots of scary humans and stay hidden in the suitcase?"
"You do not die."
"...How does that have anything to do with my question."
"I hide in suitcase, you do not die."
Bruce didn't see how those statements had anything to do with each other, but whatever; he could ask in a few months when the mer was more fluent. "All right. Let's get ready."
It had to be the suitcase, since the only other option was hauling Tim around in a backpack, and Bruce felt tired just thinking about that. Neither a wheelchair nor a wagon would sufficiently conceal Tim's lower half without inhumanely tying him up. The suitcase would work on a practical level, but it would look odd and possibly attract the wrong kind of attention unless Bruce had an alternate explanation.
"This is a cannula," Bruce explained. "Listen, this is important. When we go out to see humans and you hide in the suitcase, I will wear the cannula in my nose. It will be part of our disguise, so humans won't bother you. Don't play with the cannula, and don't pull on it. I have to keep you safe, and if you pull the cannula off me, then we won't be able to go to town and get the mail, or more fish for you to eat."
Tim was, predictably, playing with the cannula, but he was also watching Bruce's signing hands thoughtfully. "I hide in suitcase."
"Yes. Stay in the suitcase so humans won't see you."
"C-a-n-" he paused.
"C-a-n-n-u-l-a."
Tim repeated the letters several times until he'd memorized the spelling. "I safe?"
"It's hard to explain, you don't know enough words yet. Just please trust me, Tim. Don't pull on the cannula. Don't play with it. I will give you other toys. Okay?"
"...Okay."
Bruce took a test run around the island. When he was satisfied that Tim was keeping hidden and leaving the plastic cord alone, he slipped the boy a piece of fish and then headed for the boat.
It felt strange stepping onto shore for the first time in what felt like years. Everything was so familiar, yet Bruce felt like a different person. He just stood there for a while, adjusting, then took a deep breath and began moving forward. Tim was tucked away in the suitcase with wet blankets to keep him hydrated and toys to keep him occupied, the very top unzipped to let in air.
The cannula cord snaked up from inside. It was still weird to supposedly keep an oxygen tank in a suitcase, and Bruce would have to completely B.S. his way through a cover story when (not if; it was a small town) people asked, but at least 'Did you hear that Bruce developed a serious medical condition at such a young age? Poor deluded thing thinks hiding the oxygen tank in a suitcase is actually discrete' was much preferable to 'I wonder what super-mysterious valuable item Bruce is hauling around so protectively.'
It was a much longer trip without a bike, but it wasn't like Bruce had anything else to do, and he could use the exercise since he'd been slacking off lately. He went to the post office first, and was detained for a while by the curious postmaster, who chatted with him about everything from his cannula cover story to how his parents were doing to what Dick was up to (allegedly spending a few weeks at camp).
Bruce, depressed introvert that he was, wanted to call it quits the minute he escaped, but they really did need more food and some odds and ends. He sighed and found a building to hide behind, then crouched to check on Tim. "Are you okay?" he murmured, opening the zipper a little wider so he could see the boy's reply.
"Humans."
"You did very well. You were very quiet and stayed hidden, so no one knew you were there. Good job."
"Good job."
"Do you need to go home early, or should we stop to get more food first?" Bruce asked, half-hoping Tim would give him an excuse to not be responsible.
"Food."
"You sure? Are you scared, or not scared?"
"Scared. Food. You do not die."
"...I don't know how to interpret that. Do you want to stay longer with the scary humans and get more food, or do you want to go home where it's safe and quiet and we can take a nap?"
"I want food. You do not nap, we play checkers."
"...All right, fine." Bruce got some more fish for the mer but didn't bother getting any food for himself - he could survive for at least a few days on the dregs of supplies left at the back of his cabinets. In the boat, he pulled out the cannula and gave an all-clear signal to Tim, who slipped into the water and swam the rest of the way home. Once in the house, Bruce set up the checkerboard and deliberately lost a game to Tim so he could check that box off the list and then throw himself onto the couch for a much-needed nap.
He woke up to find Tim squirming into his shirt. It brought up painfully bittersweet memories of other sea children cuddling up to him, and he couldn't stand it. "No," he said sharply. He wrestled the mer back out of his shirt and practically dumped him in a kiddie pool. "Personal space. I sleep there, you sleep here."
"You sleep, I sleep."
"You're wet. I can't sleep if you're getting water all over me and the couch."
Tim stared at him flatly.
"Take a nap."
"No."
"Fine, don't take a nap. Just don't bother me or I'll go upstairs." He dragged over the entire toy basket, then went to curl up on the couch again.
He couldn't get them out of his head, a certain fish mer affectionately cuddling with him even in captivity and a soft little seal relaxing in his arms, trusting him not to be cruel like so many others of his kind.
Bruce bit down hard on his own forearm to stop himself from wailing. He lay rigid on the couch for a long time, eyes squeezed shut, listening to the soft clinking sounds of Tim playing alone.
TBC