Gifts From the Sea [Batfam Bingo 2019: AU: Zoo] - Part 31 (rough draft)

A Batman fanfic by Raberba girl

At one point, the guards came for him again. Jason's stomach twisted with dread as they went down the halls, but he was surprised when they eventually went outdoors rather than deeper into the compound.

There was a place that wasn't a garden, exactly, but it was very green with cultivated trees and bushes and a winding stone walkway. They traveled the full circuit of this path, returned indoors, then went back down some vaguely familiar corridors until Jason was escorted back into his cell and left alone.

He stared at the locked door, slowly realizing that being marched around with no explanation was their idea of taking him for a walk. Like he was a freaking dog.

"FUCK YOU!" he shouted at the door. He whirled around with the intention of throwing a tantrum, then paused in surprise.

The shelf had new books on it. Warily, he crept closer to inspect them and found some of the titles he'd requested. He stood there holding a yellowed copy of The Borrowers for a while as he cried, then curled up in bed. He tried to read the book, but couldn't concentrate, and ended up just hugging it to himself as he thought of long ago days hiding in the public library, of reading by candlelight as his mother snored nearby, of listening to Bruce's voice as he read aloud to lull him to sleep...

o.o.o

The next time he was taken for a walk, Jason defiantly stopped in the middle of the path. The guards waited, patiently at first, then one of them frowned and prodded at him.

"Maybe I don't want to walk that way," Jason said loudly. "Maybe I want to walk this way instead." He headed in the opposite direction. The guards looked disgruntled, but followed him.

Jason walked all over the compound and found some courtyards and gardens to explore. A lot of doors were locked, and the guards forced him away from some others, but for the most part, he was allowed to wander as he pleased. It both amused and annoyed him when some of the servants they passed looked alarmed to see him and skittered out of the way like they thought he might bite.

Jason paused on a walkway above a large, open-air training ground. There was a group of about twenty people practicing some sort of martial arts, most of them teenagers but a few of them actual kids. Strangely, the smallest two seemed to be the most skilled, and were sparring viciously at the moment. Jason winced at the spray of blood when the girl got knocked to the ground, but she scrambled to recover immediately. Two moves later, a woman's voice rang out, and both kids halted and stood at attention like little soldiers.

Jason jolted and backed away from the railing when he realized that the woman was the lady who'd bought him. She gave some rapid instructions he would have been too far away to hear even if she'd been speaking English, then she gestured sharply. The kids bowed to her and then faced each other again, taking up ready stances.

Then she looked up at Jason. He felt his flesh creep at her attention even though she was so far away. After a moment, the kids looked at her, then up at him. He ducked away and hurried down the walkway. When he glanced back, all three had gone back to what they were doing. He still shuddered and escaped into the nearest corridor, trying to find the way back to his room.

o.o.o

Dinner that night was different than usual. Jason frowned at the chunk of meat wrapped in bread and drizzled with some sort of spicy, meaty sauce. He was nearly halfway through it when he suddenly realized it was meant to be their idea of a chili dog. "Wow. Just...wow." It didn't taste anything like a chili dog, but it...wasn't bad, so he finished it off, sulking as he tried to process his mixed feelings.

o.o.o

Two days after the preferences and background interview, a parade of servants came in with crates of books. Jason stared as they filled his shelf to the brim and stacked the remainder on the floor. A couple of the servants gave him contemptuous looks as they left; the rest practically fled as if they thought they were feeding a monster.

When he was alone again, Jason went to look. Every single book he'd asked for was there, in shiny new editions, even the ones he'd already been given used copies of. For the first time since coming here - since being kidnapped - he felt...not horrible. Kind of excited. He ran his fingertips greedily over the spines and pulled a book from the shelf to look at.

"You're still fucking traffickers and you suck!" he yelled at the door. Then he pulled more books off the shelf and took them to his bed. The next time he blinked and looked up, a little drunk on the story he'd been sucked into, it was long past nightfall.

o.o.o

The walks and the food and the books made life...better. That scared him in a different way, though, because if his captivity became more tolerable, what if he started seeing it as his new normal? What if he started being grateful to his OWNERS, like all the other brainwashed people around here?

He was stress-reading when he started to turn a page and was startled at the smear of red that appeared. He stared at his fingers. He'd anxiously bitten and scratched at them so much that they were...bleeding.

He wondered how his captors would react to that. The thought of them wrapping his hands so thickly that he could do nothing for himself made him sit up and squeeze his hands between his thighs as if he could somehow crush them out of existence. He was already so helpless, they already were so contemptuous of him, he couldn't give them another reason to restrict him, he couldn't...

o.o.o

He'd found the library. It was a huge room with lots of light and lots of shelves, filled with books and even some scrolls.

He wanted to look around the place more closely, but the people shelving items and working at desks were all as uptight as if he was a pest that had gotten into their food. They kept him away from the shelves, actually hissing and flapping their hands to shoo him away, and he exclaimed in exasperation, "I like books, you dumbasses, I'm not gonna make a bonfire out of 'em or anything! Fuck's sake..."

"Are you a mutant?"

Jason startled around at the sound of the unexpected voice - high and young, with that same slight British-ey accent that the al Ghul lady had. "What?" He stared at the boy who'd come up and addressed him. The kid only looked about eight years old, but he was standing straight with his arms crossed and an arrogant look on his face as if he thought he was a prince.

"A mutant," the child repeated contemptuously. "The product of genetic mutation." Then, without waiting for Jason to respond, he rolled his eyes and added, "Because you are clearly an abnormal specimen. What use does a creature like you have for books?"

"What use does a creature like you have for books?" Jason snapped.

The boy looked haughty, and Jason suddenly recognized him as one of the kids who'd been violently sparring. "The written word is an efficient way to transfer knowledge-"

"I was being sarcastic, moron! I don't know how they brainwash you all in this hellhole, but selkies aren't animals just because we can turn into seals sometimes. I'm not an animal, get it through your thick fucking skull."

The boy stared at him. "Grandfather says-"

"Is your grandfather a selkie?" Jason challenged.

"Of course not! He is-"

"Well, then maybe you should trust the ACTUAL SELKIE to know more about selkies than some old dude who likes to talk out of his ass."

The child looked utterly shocked, maybe from hearing someone trash-talking his dear old gramps. (Jason wondered briefly if he ought to feel bad, but then decided that anyone who was in this place of their own free will deserved to get trash-talked.) One of the guards asked something, and the boy's voice sounded faint when he answered.

Jason wished he knew what they were saying, because the guard seized his shoulder, yanked him around, and slapped him hard across the face. Jason, dazed by the sudden violence, might not have understood the outraged scolding even if it was in English. Then the guards were marching him forcefully away, ignoring the wavering question of the child behind them.

Jason was shoved all the way back to his room, where the guard who'd hit him knocked an armful of books off his shelf and then spat on the floor. The door was shut and he was left alone, shaking.

o.o.o

It was the middle of the night, and Jason was crying because he was trying to make a decision. No - he'd already made the decision, he was just trying to accept it.

He...he had to escape. He had to just...leave.

Even if it meant leaving his pelt behind.

He sobbed as he bit at his hands, trying fiercely to pound it into his heart. He would never swim again. He would be giving up the ocean, a piece of his heart, a piece of his identity. He'd be as good as naked for the rest of his life, raw and vulnerable from the loss.

But it would be fucking worth it, because at least he'd be free again. He'd be home, with his family, and they'd love him even if he wasn't whole anymore. He'd be safe. He'd be crippled, but at least he'd be free.

It hurt, though; it hurt so much, so much, the loss seemed to cut through him and he couldn't stop crying and bleeding...

o.o.o

Of course, even after making the decision, he had to make plans and preparations. He needed to do more exploring, see if there was any way to get out of the compound. He'd have to start hoarding or stealing food, figure out how to get hold of some non-perishables. Water. Something to use as a weapon. Maybe money, or at least a way to contact Bruce. Bruce could come get him, Jason just had to somehow reach him and tell him where he was...

o.o.o

The problem was that the only times he wasn't being closely watched were when he was locked in his room. It made it difficult to explore. Guards were always following him wherever he went, servants often side-eyed him as they passed, and sometimes Jason caught glimpses of the al Ghul lady watching him from a distance.

Jason still hadn't come up with a solution to the problem by the time he met the haughty boy again.

He was sitting by a pool, watching fish swimming lazily in the depths, when he heard the approach of small footsteps. "You. The Wayne seal."

Jason glared. "My name is Jason."

The boy narrowed his eyes.

"You know, it's customary for people to introduce themselves when they meet."

The boy lifted his head and announced grandly, "My name is Damian al Ghul."

Jason blinked. "Like the bi- the lady who thinks she owns me?"

"My mother does own you."

"No one owns me," Jason snapped automatically, even as he digested the revelation that this boy, Damian, was the son of the woman who'd bought him. That woman was second-in-command here, which made Damian something like royalty in this weird cult. No wonder he acted like an entitled brat.

Damian rolled his eyes and sat down next to him. "She does. So if you're not an animal, does that mean you think you're human?"

Jason wanted to answer 'yes,' but...human beings couldn't transform into seals. "I'm a person," he said roughly. "Just like Superman's still a person even though he's an alien, and the Flash is a person even though he can run a million times faster than normal humans, and Wonder Woman, and Aquaman... You can't look them in the face and say they're not people just because they can do things normal humans can't."

Damian glared down into the water for a while. "Mother said that a human took you in and treated you like his son."

"Yeah. He was trying to adopt me when those trafficking bastards kidnapped me and fucking sold me to your mom."

Damian frowned at him. He looked like he was about to say something, but then he closed his mouth without speaking and just studied Jason for a while.

"What?" Jason said defensively.

"You really do look like you could pass as human..."

Jason rolled his eyes. "I have a human birth certificate. I went to school. I got put in foster 'care' for a while. I'm human, okay? Maybe I don't meet your stupid definition for what a human being is, but I'm a human. And what you're all doing to me is wrong."

"Is that why you're always causing trouble? Because you think you shouldn't be here?"

"Duh."

"Then how come you're not trying to escape instead?"

Jason's heart jumped a little in his chest. "You gonna help me with that?" he managed, deliberately not looking at the guards even though he was pretty sure none of them understood English.

Damian tsked. "Of course not. I simply meant if I was...taken into captivity, I would not be wasting time causing petty inconveniences. I would have escaped within twenty-four hours, so I assumed that you either have subhuman intelligence or are simply incompetent."

"I'm fourteen!" Jason burst out. "You're, what, eight? We're KIDS, we're supposed to be going to school and hanging out with friends and playing fucking softball, not learning how to escape captivity in twenty-four hours or less!"

"Hmph. I'm an al Ghul. I am held to high standards," Damian said, looking almost proud of the fact.

"Crazy standards," Jason said in disgust. "You know this place is basically a cult, right?"

Damian's face changed color as he glared angrily. "My grandfather is going to save the world. That's why you're here - your species is endangered and he's studying you all to try to save you."

Jason stared. "Ripping off my fucking pelt is not saving me. It's torture."

"It's harmless! You continue to function normally, you feel no pain-"

"THERE'S OTHER KINDS OF PAIN!" Jason screamed, then scrambled away as the guards surged toward him. Damian said something sharp and gestured. The guards subsided, but still glowered at Jason. "You don't even know," Jason panted, feeling a little hysterical. "You don't know what it's like to have a pelt or to have it taken, so don't tell me how to fucking feel!"

His heart was beating so hard it ached, and he lifted a hand to his chest. "I want...to go back to my room now...I want-" Tears suddenly stung his eyes when he realized he'd called the cell his room. "I want my dad...I want to go home...!"

Damian might have watched him get taken away by the guards, but Jason didn't know for sure because by then he was crying and not really capable of noticing much.

TBC