Gifts From the Sea, a Batman fanfic by Raberba girl
Batfam Bingo 2019: AU: Zoo
Chapter 5 - "You're (Un)fired!" (rough draft 2)
"Dick," Bruce said seriously, and the mer's eyes widened in apprehension. "There is going to be a big change soon. You will be moved to a different pool for three hours per day." He had argued for one or two; management had wanted six; Mark had bargained it to an initial three. "A lot of people will come to look at you, but they will be outside the tank, and they cannot hurt you."
"Hurt me?" Dick asked anxiously.
"No. It will not hurt. You will only be moved. You will have a different pool to swim in sometimes, but every day you will come back here to this one."
"You stay with me."
"I don't know yet if I will be allowed to, but I will be here in the back pool to play with you when display is finished. Okay?"
"You STAY."
Dick got clingy after that, and even more suspicious of other humans than usual. When the day came for his first move to the display habitat, after-hours so as to get him accustomed to it before his official debut, he saw all the humans gathering close to the pool and fled into a deep, far corner. He refused to come out even for Bruce.
Bruce looked up from slapping the water, his other hand full of fish, and was horrified to see a net being brought in. "Wait, just give me-"
"Move, Wayne," the zoo director, Ryan, said brusquely.
"He's scared! Dragging him by force will only make it worse!"
"You were the one who tipped him off, now get out of the way before you cause any more damage."
Bruce stared, trembling a little with fierce anger. Then he threw the fish back into the bucket, stood up, and managed to grab a rebreather and dive into the pool seconds after the net had been dropped into the water.
"NO!" Dick signed when he saw him, but then caught sight of the net and shrieked. He darted around, panicked, and Bruce wished he had thought to bring a tone-emitter to get the mer's attention underwater.
Dick, realizing that he was trapped and the net was advancing, dashed into Bruce's arms and clung. The man swam hard for the surface and, still gripping Dick, dragged himself out of the pool one-handed. Ignoring all the shouts, he hoisted the mer up into his arms and marched away, leaving a trail of water behind him.
He carried Dick all the way to the habitat and gently dropped him in. Dick immediately swam to the deepest, farthest corner he could find and huddled there.
Bruce turned back to all the people who had followed him, eyes flicking from Mark's wry-looking expression to Ryan's incensed one. "Easier and more efficient than a net."
"That was against protocol, Wayne!" Ryan bellowed. "He'd have been hurt if you dropped him, he could have escaped, he could have-"
"He could have been hurt by the net! There is no possible way that poor boy could escape from this place!"
"YOU'RE FIRED, WAYNE! GET OUT!"
Bruce, shaking a little, restrained the urge to put his hands around Ryan's throat and started to walk out as calmly as he could.
"BOOSE! BOOSE!"
He flinched and looked back. Dick was frantically trying to pull himself out of the water, but a crowd of people were holding him back. When he violently resisted, someone came up with a catch pole. "No!" Bruce cried, remembering that the last time he'd seen a tool like that, it had been involved in the death of Dick's father. "No, wait, let me talk to him-"
"GET OUT BEFORE I CALL THE POLICE," Ryan bellowed at him.
Bruce was nearly crying with rage and helplessness and grief for Dick as he headed out to his car. It took a while for him to notice the woman who was keeping pace with him and trying to get his attention. "Mr. Wayne? Mr. Wayne?"
Bruce paused and peered at her. "Oh...Ms. Ayers," he realized, finally recognizing the documentary producer who had seen advertisements for the zoo's upcoming mer exhibit and had talked her way into getting a behind-the-scenes peek.
"Mr. Wayne, would you like to be interviewed for the film?"
"I...don't ask me anything right now," Bruce said, not wanting to make any major decisions when he was so distraught.
"Would you like me to get you in touch with some contacts I have in the press?"
Bruce paused. If Ryan really had been serious in firing him, probably his only chance of getting back to poor Dick would be spreading the story and getting the public on his side. "I... You can give them my number. I have to go home."
It had been so long since Bruce had been in his apartment that it was a stale, musty mess. He shuffled around in a daze, mechanically warming up some canned food for a meal and sorting through his piled-up mail, throwing away most of it. When his cell phone started ringing with unfamiliar numbers, he ignored it, but he did respond to a text from a journalist, saying he'd give serious consideration to doing an interview.
Then he went to bed.
o.o.o
People came for the exotic notion of a mer'maid,' and stayed for the tragic tale of separation. Bruce's interview got a lot of attention, and almost immediately, there were protestors in front of the zoo and a flood of phone calls and emails, demanding that Bruce be reinstated.
Two days before the mer exhibit was supposed to open, Bruce got a call from Ryan. "Bruce, I don't know how you got the impression that we let you go, but it was a misunderstanding. You need to come in to work tomorrow."
Bruce didn't push the 'misunderstanding' claim. "All right." He showed up before 6:00 a.m.; only the security guards and a few overnight staff were there. Bruce was alarmed when he couldn't find Dick in either his usual pool or the new habitat, and no one seemed to know where the calf was being kept.
As soon as Mark pulled into the parking lot, Bruce was out the door, and ambushed the man before he'd even reached the steps.
Mark winced. "Just so you know, they isolated and restrained him against my recommendation."
"WHERE IS HE, MARK."
"Step away from me, Wayne," the smaller man demanded, and Bruce grudgingly backed off. "Get me another cup of coffee, and I'll show you."
Bruce was finally led to the pool where the most ornery of the dolphins was usually kept. The animal drifted lethargically near the middle, and Mark made his way to a smaller pen on the side.
"Dick!" Bruce cried, hurrying ahead. "Dick!"
At the sound of his voice, the still submerged form thrashed, then the mer surfaced, crying out.
"Why is there a fucking muzzle on him?!"
"Because he was fucking biting people, Bruce."
There was no submerged ledge here; Bruce crouched at the edge of the pool and stretched out his hand. Dick seemed to be trying to reach him, but something was holding him back.
"What-?!" It finally registered that the calf's garment was not one of the usual T-shirts. "What is he wearing?!"
"Bruce," Mark warned pre-emptively, "you already got fired, you're gonna want to think really, really hard before you go storming into anyone's office or making any phone calls."
"WHAT THE FUCK IS HE-?!" Giving up mid-cry, Bruce plunged into the pool and discovered, to his horror, that the mer was bound in a makeshift straitjacket, with a cord attached from the back of the garment to a ring in the wall.
Bruce didn't know any words foul enough to express his rage. He worked as quickly as he could to get the muzzle off and hurled it away. Dick immediately started ramming against him and biting him, but Bruce was too solid to be moved much and the bites were shallow, so he let the calf vent. He dragged Dick out of the pool so he could get the restrictive garment unfastened.
As soon as Dick was free, he screamed and leaped back into the pool, dashing in a few crazed circles before jumping back onto the concrete and hurling himself across the rough surface, scraping his body low as if deliberately trying to harm himself.
"Dick, stop! Dick!" Bruce got him into the restraining hold and Dick's cries crescendoed, tears streaming down his face as he wailed his fear and pain and fury. "I know, I know, Dick, it's terrible, no one should ever have treated you like this. I'm so sorry, Dickie, I'm so sorry, I'm here now, I've got you..."
Eventually, the mer's cries died down and he shouted laboriously, "I...mmad...you...!"
"I'm sorry, Dickie. I'm sorry."
"Hhan'! HHAN'!"
"Only if you don't hurt yourself. You can hurt me if you need to, but don't hurt yourself, Dickie."
Bruce cautiously let go, and the mer slapped him hard with his tail. "You!" Dick's hands screamed in a wild mix of ASL and mer signing, "You LEFT! You hurt me! THEY hurt me! I'm angry! ANGRY!"
"You have a right to be angry," Bruce said, clumsily echoing in mer sign. "You were hurt, so now you are angry, yes."
All the tension seemed to drain out of Dick's body and he lay down, limp and weeping. Bruce carefully drew the calf into his arms and picked him up.
Mark, focused very hard on his coffee, wiped his eyes when Bruce passed.
Dick lay lethargically in his own pool for a couple of hours, ignoring all attempts to engage or even feed him. When Bruce dressed the mer in his shiny star shirt, Dick didn't resist but also didn't show any reaction to his favorite T-shirt. He didn't show any reaction to Bruce briefly leaving, either, but when Bruce came back, the calf was at the edge of the pool, arms stretched out and crying.
"I'm here, Dickie, I'm here, chum, I just had to go grab some more bandages, you really did a number on me earlier..."
Eventually, Ryan came stalking in, and Dick instantly fled to a deep corner. "We need to take him to the habitat."
"He's been traumatized," Bruce protested in seething disbelief. "He needs time to rest and recover, not-"
"Are you the EXPERT here, Wayne?" Ryan demanded viciously. "Are YOU the one with multiple degrees in marine studies? NO. You're just some arrogant prick who thinks mer are right up there with magical fucking unicorns, you have no fucking idea what you're doing. Mer exhibit opens tomorrow, Wayne. Get him to the habitat, carry him like a delicate fucking princess and save us some time and manpower. Only reason I'm not firing your ass is so your fucking billionaire mommy and daddy will get off our backs."
Bruce had a lot to say in response, but he forced his mouth shut and spent the next hour coaxing Dick close enough to gently pull him out of the water and carry him to the habitat.
Dick screamed when he saw it and clung tight. "No! No! No!"
"I'm sorry, Dick, I'm so sorry, but I have to put you in here or we're both going to be in trouble..."
Bruce had to get right into the pool himself, treading water as he held the still desperately clinging mer. The only way he was allowed to rest was to hang onto the side of the pool with Dick hanging onto his neck. "I'm not leaving, chum. I promise I won't leave unless someone very important makes me, or I absolutely have to. I know you don't want to be alone, and I don't want you to be alone, either."
Ryan finally came in at one point. "Get him to look around. You can't be swimming in here when the guests are watching."
Bruce looked up at him, trying very hard not to glare, Dick's hissing loud in his ears. "I don't have anything to work with here. I need some toys, at the very least. He likes shiny, colorful thi-" Ryan stalked off.
A little later, Amanda came in with a box. "How are you guys doing?" she asked quietly.
"He's an eight-year-old child who was violently separated from the only living person he trusts, muzzled and tied up for a day, and displaced again without having any time to recover from the trauma. How do you think he's doing?"
She burst into tears. "We just want to help him!" she sobbed. "I'm sorry he was scared, but we didn't know, and Ryan and George and Judy and the others won't listen to us, and I just want to help but he hates me and I don't know what to do, Bruce, I'm so sorry...!"
Bruce was still trying to decipher the sob-distorted jumble when Dick said quietly, "Boose."
"What is it, chum?"
Dick looked unhappily at his hold on the man. Bruce put his arms around the mer, which made Dick feel secure enough to let go so he could sign. "Why she cry?"
"She feels guilty," Bruce murmured back. "She cares about you, and she is sad that you are sad."
"Good-you leave, people yell and chase, tie me hurt me."
Bruce debated whether to tell the calf that violent resistance made it worse. On one hand, it would probably be safer and more convenient all around if Dick was more compliant. On the other hand, he didn't feel right about encouraging the mer to submit to people causing him harm. What he needed was time to build trust between Dick and people like Amanda and maybe Mark who genuinely cared about him, so that they could tend to his needs with respect and gentleness the way Bruce could. Unfortunately, he didn't have time. The zoo had been promoting a new mer exhibit for weeks, and they're weren't going to postpone it at the last minute.
"Dick," he said, slowly and very quietly, "you are a lot prisoner, and I am a little prisoner. You are very much trapped, captive, forced. I am a little bit trapped, captive, forced. But neither of us are truly free."
Dick was intently focused on him. After a long moment, he signed, "People tie you?"
Bruce continued to be amazed at what the mer understood of human communication. "They...they tie my heart. They tie your arms and tail with ropes, but they tie my heart with rules and orders."
Dick gently set his hand on Bruce's chest. "Sad Boose."
"I am sad because I don't know how to help you better." He touched his forehead to the calf's. Dick nuzzled his face and licked his cheek.
Bruce turned to Amanda, who was hugging her knees as she watched them forlornly. "Did you bring some toys, Amanda?"
"A few..." She pushed the box closer, and Dick, still gripping Bruce's shirt with one hand, chirped with interest as he sorted through the contents. He held up a squeaky toy, squeezed it, and let out a brief "Eee!" of pleasure.
Bruce spent the rest of the day playing with Dick, and Amanda came in to help every time she could spare a minute. Dick gradually warmed up to her, although he did not like for her to be out of his line of vision or to touch him without explicit permission.
Dick started to panic when Bruce tried to leave for lunch. Luckily, a dolphin trainer named Miki took pity on him and brought him a pile of snacks from the vending machine in the lounge. The mer couldn't bear Bruce leaving at the end of his official shift, either, so Bruce enlisted Amanda's help in rearranging some of the aboveground decorations and hiding a sleeping bag and a padded mat behind them. She circled around to the outside of the habitat to check that the bed was hidden from the sight of anyone looking through the transparent parts of the tank.
Dick watched the proceedings curiously. "What are you doing?"
"I want to sleep here with you, Dick, but if some of my bosses find out, they will be angry at me, and I will be in trouble. I have to hide; it will be a secret. Sshh."
"Sshh."
"That's right. Quiet, secret."
"You stay here."
"Yes."
o.o.o
Bruce woke up in the middle of the night because something large, soaking wet, and slimy was hauling itself onto his sleeping bag. "Diiiick," he groaned.
Arms wrapped around him; a tail flopped over his legs. Bruce sighed deeply, then put his arm around the mer's waist. He contemplated getting up and putting Dick back in the pool, but fell asleep again before he could decide. He woke up to early morning sunlight and a spray of water in his face that Dick was cheerfully squirting through his teeth.
"No," Bruce groaned. "Bad fish. Stop that."
"Good morning!"
"Good morning..."
Dick was scheduled to be on display from 11:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. He cried when Bruce was forced to leave him at 10:45, and Bruce wondered how much of a disaster this was going to be.
Bruce was assigned to be a tour guide on the route that included the mer exhibit. Ordinarily, he would have been more nervous, as trying to keep customers interested and entertained was a different kind of public speaking than addressing the businesspeople and gala guests he was used to. Now, however, all he could think of was tiny, terrified Dick, and he honestly didn't give a flip about what these tourists thought of his performance.
He recited facts and trivia, making only a half-hearted effort to conceal the script he was carrying (he'd never gotten the chance to memorize it as he would have done if he wasn't obsessed with a baby mer). When people asked non-mer-related questions that weren't included in his script, he did some verbal acrobatics to produce non-answers to the ones he had no idea how to reply to, which was most of them. When people nagged and pestered him about the 'mermaid,' he hid the fact that he was even more eager to see Dick than they were, and told them over and over again that the mer habitat was the final stop on the route.
At last, the first group of guests was led into the underground grotto-like enclosure with a view into the mer habitat. Bruce hurried through a sugary introduction, eyes fruitlessly scanning the water for Dick. He stopped some brats from banging on the side of the tank and continued rambling as he wondered how to summon the mer into view.
Then the guests shrieked in surprise and excitement when a finned figure suddenly shot into view and slammed against the transparent wall. Dick's mouth moved in the shape of Bruce's name, his voice lost in the tank, eyes fixed intently on his friend, hands and forehead pressed against the barrier.
"Hello, D-i-c-k," Bruce signed. Dick didn't really know the alphabet yet, but he had learned to recognize the sequence of finger movements that made up his name.
"B! Help!"
"You are all right, Dick. Safe. Be calm and patient. I will visit you later."
"Angry!"
"I'm sorry."
"Come here!"
"Later."
"He knows SIGN LANGUAGE?!" one of the guests exclaimed incredulously.
Bruce stifled a sigh and turned back to do his job. "Mer are very intelligent, but we don't know much about them. Part of our work here at ABAZ is studying how much communication we can teach Dickie here."
"Why isn't she wearing seashells?" a mother demanded, covering her son's eyes. "It's indecent!"
It took Bruce a moment to recover from the...unexpectedness of the question. "Dick is a male, and a calf." 'And not a Disney character,' he added silently. "Mer are animals, so they don't have human standards of modesty, and adult females only wear swimsuit tops during shows, er..." To stave off potential lawsuits from offended guests, honestly, though he probably wasn't supposed to say that. "For decoration. That being said, Dick actually likes to wear T-shirts, but, uh..."
He wondered if he was allowed to say that it had been forbidden for the mer to wear clothing while on display. Then he wondered if he would get in trouble for letting slip that Dick normally liked to wear clothes. He could see at least two people in the crowd intently scribbling notes. "We thought it was...best if Dickie was presented in his most natural state." If being stuck in a tank with sterile water, artificial rock formations, frozen food, and no parents could be considered 'natural.'
"He's so pretty," a young girl cooed, craning to look at Dick better. The angry little mer had raced around the habitat in protest of Bruce 'ignoring' him, then sunk to the bottom in a sulk. When he realized he was being noticed, he rose up and arced in a vertical circle. This prompted some oohs and ahs, and the whole crowd pressed itself against the side of the tank. Dick, looking intrigued, swam slowly past them. Then he stopped, backed away a bit, and smiled widely, baring his sharp teeth. He sweetly made a mer sign that Bruce was pretty sure was the equivalent of isolating the middle finger in certain cultures.
"Dickie sure is excited to see you all!" Bruce exclaimed brightly, in his best tour guide voice. "For our last five minutes, does anyone have any questions?"
Of course they did, and Bruce was still fielding questions even after he'd finally, with some help from Mark, persuaded everyone to get moving and leave the grotto area. He was late getting to his next group.
Now that he had a bit of experience under his belt, it was a little easier, though he still chafed at the frustration of being away from Dick. The guests seemed restless, too, most of them not seeming very interested in anything that was not the promised mermaid. Bruce was very eager to finally be able to step back into the grotto.
Dick slammed himself against the side of the tank again. "STAY."
"Be patient. I am working."
"Angry bored I want you come here BORED!"
There was a grunting squeal from the back of the crowd. A group of about five children, followed hastily by two women with name tags and T-shirts from a school for the Deaf, rushed closer to the tank and immediately began signing at Dick.
"You know ASL?!"
"That is so COOL!"
"You're so beautiful, I love you!"
"Hi, my name is P-a-t-t-y! I'm so excited to meet you!"
"Are you deaf?! That's awesome!"
Even the teachers looked delighted. "Hello! We're so glad you know ASL!"
"You are very smart and wonderful, I'm so glad to meet you!"
Dick stared at them all in astonishment. "Hand talk! Help me! Bad people kill Mom Dad, tie me, hurt me! Help! Please help! Please!"
The expressions on the human signers' faces had changed to horror.
Bruce stepped up and signed to Dick, "Remember, your parents did not die here. They died at the other place."
Dick, pressed up against the side of the tank, stared at Bruce intently.
One of the Deaf children waved to get Bruce's attention. "Who is hurting him?!"
Bruce tried to figure out how to answer, keenly aware of both Dick watching him and the fact that he would probably be fired for good if he made the zoo look bad. "I disagreed with my boss and was sent away for a few days. While I was gone, Dick was put in a small pool, but now that I am back, I will try to make things better for him."
Dick signed slowly and emphatically. "Mom. Dad. DEAD."
"Yes, Dick, it was terrible. No one wanted your mom and dad to die. Things went very wrong that day."
Dick slammed his fists against the tank wall and then rushed away.
Meanwhile, all the other guests who didn't know ASL were getting restless and frustrated; several kids were whining. "Well," Bruce addressed them all, feeling at a loss, "that's it for...the tour, so...enjoy the rest of your day, folks! Let's head on out..."
The Deaf children lingered outside, peppering Bruce with questions that he did his best to answer.
"Is he happy here in the zoo?" one little girl asked anxiously.
"He is still grieving his parents. It might be a long time before he is happy again."
One of the teachers asked, her eyes hard, "Is he ever restrained or physically punished?"
"He had an infection on his tail that we had to put medicine on every day. He didn't like it, but we had to keep his tail still to put the medicine on it."
"If his parents were still alive, would he be happy here?"
All Bruce could respond was, "We will never know." He felt so torn, knowing exactly how they all felt with their concern over Dick's well-being, yet forced to defend the institution that was holding the mer captive.
2:00 could not come soon enough. On the dot, Bruce shut and locked the doors to the grotto, then hurried up to the employee entrance to the habitat. "Dick," he called.
He sat by the water for a long time before Dick finally rose up. "They want to help me. You want me to hurt."
"No, Dickie," Bruce said softly. "I told you, I am a prisoner, too. Those days I was gone, they wanted to send me away forever, so I would never see you again. But I talked to some people, and they pestered zoo management and I was able to come back here. But they can still send me away again, and I have to be careful."
After a long moment, the calf's eyes filled with tears. "I want Mom and Dad."
Bruce's own eyes stung in sympathy. "I know, chum. I know you miss them."
"What is word?" Dick asked as he cried, and mimed and described it until Bruce figured out what he wanted.
"Oh...blood. This...this is 'blood.' "
"Blood. A lot of blood. Mom and Dad die."
At last, the mer leaned against Bruce, who hugged him. "I watched the video of when they died... It was terrible, I was very sad. I know you are more sad than I was, though."
"Mama, Papa," Dick said in mer language, "I love you."
TBC
A/N: To clarify, Amanda was talking about her entire experience with Dick, not just the most recent stuff. She's one of those who would have treated Dick the way Bruce is treating him now if she hadn't subconsciously taken too many cues from the higher-level staff.
*random mini-rant* Did you guys know how freaking many toxins are in our environment, including our food and our body products?! I thought I already knew about a lot of it, but the other day, I found out how awful most sunscreens are; they're actually more likely to cause cancer rather than prevent it. If you do need to use sunblock, use a mineral-based kind, not chemical-based. And anything with parabens or "fragrance" in the ingredient list is most likely toxic. I don't use many body care products, but of course I do have to use a few - I was going through my bathroom cabinets after finding out about the sunscreen thing (and spending the time I meant to write doing research on what the heck the ingredient "fragrance" is instead X'''D), and nearly every bottle I looked at had poison in the ingredients. -.- No wonder so many people these days are getting cancer and allergies and stuff.
