Gifts From the Sea, a Batman fanfic by Raberba girl
Batfam Bingo 2019: AU: Zoo
Chapter 8 - Fend For Yourself (rough draft 2)
When Dick was eleven years old, anti-cap activists finally won a major victory: it became illegal to hold mer in captivity for entertainment or public display.
After that came a stressful eight months of ABAZ trying to sell Dick to a research laboratory and refusing to sell him to the Wayne family, all accompanied by very mixed, passionate, and controversial media coverage and public reactions. Although nothing came of it either way except in Kentucky (which had a mer population of 0), several state legislatures discussed a proposal to add mer to their lists of banned exotic pets. The Waynes repeatedly insisted that they wanted Dick as a child, not a pet, and lent their weight to the weak but slowly growing movement to legally recategorize mer as people rather than animals.
"This sort of...hits home for me," a reporter named Clark Kent admitted to Bruce near the tail end of a phone interview. "One of my colleagues and I have been looking into this whole 'metahuman' phenomenon, and the practice of denying sentient beings basic rights or even legal personhood just because they aren't...normal humans..." He exhaled. "I can really sympathize with Dickie."
"I appreciate you helping to give Dick a voice."
When Dick was twelve, ABAZ, finding itself on attack from all sides, abruptly announced their plans to release the mer into the wild.
Bruce, sitting there in the meeting when the announcement was first made to the employees, was too shocked to process for a minute. Then he had too many questions to figure out which one to ask first.
Luckily, he wasn't the only one with questions. "I presume we're going to be spending the next year or so training him how to fend for himself?" Mark spoke up, face expressionless.
"Oh, there's no need for that!" Judy said brightly.
"We don't have a year," Ryan stated, voice flat. "We start paying fines if Dick is still in our possession after July 4th."
"That's less than a month from now!" Amanda gasped.
"He's a calf," Bruce managed to say. "Still a child; he was born in captivity. He doesn't know the first thing about-"
Judy spoke over him. "The merman's natural instincts will come to the forefront once he's placed back in his home waters. We're going to need everyone's help to promote the event and get Dickie ready for his big day."
Bruce was torn between desperately needing to stay and get all the information he could, or storming out before he punched somebody. He quickly decided that there would be no worthwhile good news, so he started coughing hard and left the room, presumably to get a drink of water. Instead, he headed straight to Dick's habitat.
The calf was swimming aimlessly, bored, but put on a burst of speed and popped out of the water as soon as he saw his favorite person. "B!"
"Hey, Dickie," Bruce murmured, surprised that he could hear in his own voice how emotionally weary he was.
"You okay?" Dick asked in alarm, hauling himself out of the water as Bruce knelt to meet him.
"Dick...I have good news and bad news."
The mer cocked his head.
"The good news is...they're setting you free. They're sending you to the ocean."
Dick went stock-still, staring.
"The bad news is that they're doing this in just a few weeks, so we'll barely have any time to teach you how to catch your own fish, and how to defend yourself... Things to avoid or be wary of, behavior of other animals to read, oh God..." He rubbed a hand over his face, his mind whirling with mental images of his precious boy succumbing to pollution, getting eaten by sharks, caught by unscrupulous humans, lost in the depths with no knowledge of how to find food if it was scarce and no companionship whatsoever...
"B," Dick whispered, setting a hand on his chest.
Bruce raised his head. "Did your parents ever tell you anything about the ocean?"
"Yes."
"Enough that you think you could survive there on your own?"
"Find my pod."
"You were born in captivity, you don't have a pod to go back to. Do you mean your mother's pod or your father's pod?"
"...Yes," Dick signed, less certainly this time.
"Do you know how to find your mother's pod or your father's pod?"
After a nonplussed moment, Dick glared. "I will go home to the ocean."
"Dick," Bruce said, standing up, "I am going to fetch some live fish and put them in your pool, so show me whether or not you can catch them."
It took all day. All day. They started with three fish; Dick at first spooked away from them, having never been in the same pool as live fish before because management had feared he would eat any he was put on display with. Dick quickly got over his nervousness and tried to examine the fish, but they always rushed away from him. He spent nearly two hours chasing the fish around the pool, trying and failing to even get a good look at them.
He finally got the idea to keep very still, and after another hour, the fish stopped fleeing from him. They never came very close, but he was at least able to watch them as he drifted nearly motionless.
Bruce tried putting him in a smaller pool with the fish, and after some lengthy, determined swimming, he finally managed to catch one. It instantly slipped out of his hands. It wasn't until many catches later that he was successfully able to catch a fish and keep hold of it with his fangs. Drifting there with the struggling fish held tightly in his teeth and hands, Dick eyed Bruce a little frantically as if asking what to do next.
"Rip!" Bruce called, miming it.
Dick tore a large chunk of flesh out of the fish. The creature drifted free, struggling feebly as it died. Dick slowly chewed, watching the trail of blood with wide eyes. He reached for the fish again, but made a face and pushed it away before taking another bite. "Yuck."
Bruce resisted the urge to facepalm. He wish he knew how wild mer ate their fish. "Why is it yucky?" he signed through the tank wall.
"Bones and blood!"
"You've eaten flesh off of fish bones before!"
"It's floppy!" Dick convulsed for a moment to demonstrate.
"Kill it first before you eat it."
Dick was very tired by then, so instead of making him hunt and catch a new fish, Bruce had him practice with one of the usual frozen ones. "When you catch it, find a rock or something to bash its head against. ...You can use the side of the pool for now, but you will not have a pool in the ocean. You need to learn how to find tools. Maybe even carry tools, and how to make or acquire something to carry them in."
"This is hard!" Dick complained. "I want to go home!"
"Dick, making the ocean your home will be VERY hard, and you have very little time to learn and practice."
As the weeks flew by, Bruce was vaguely aware of the media storm in the outside world concerning the upcoming release, and he talked to his parents frequently since they'd long been financially involved in matters relating to Dick, but most of his focus was on the mer.
One or two marine biologists employed by the zoo had been assigned to train Dick for life in the wild, but they didn't spend as much time with the mer as Bruce did, and he felt like they lacked motivation. Bruce didn't have much idea what he was doing, but he researched and did his best to teach Dick.
"What's this?" he quizzed, presenting an unlabeled substance.
"Pe'toleum," Dick sighed. "It's bad and I'll swim away."
"Good. What's this?"
"Seaweed. Safe but don't get tangled."
"Good. What's this...?"
o.o.o
The day of the release, Dick was transported to the boat in a brightly-labeled truck along a route filled with the press, fans, activists, and others. When he was removed from the truck, several people in the crowd hurled GPS tags in protest of ABAZ's decision to release the mer without one (ostensibly to give Dick the most natural experience possible, but really because the poorly-trained, underage calf was likely to die quickly, and they didn't want an easy way for people to find out).
Bruce carried Dick the short way from the truck to the small tank on the boat where the mer sat unhappily, surrounded by caretakers, VIP guests, and two carefully-selected reporters. He clung to Bruce and ignored everyone else, craning to see the ocean past the distant railings.
"Ocean?" he rumbled in mer language, "That's the ocean?"
Bruce vocalized quietly in the same language, "Hush, soon; not safe now." Dick didn't answer, instead hauling himself a little farther up Bruce's arm to stare over the man's shoulder. Then he glared in annoyance at one of the VIPs, a celebrity who had started patronizingly chittering random dolphin-like sounds at him. Bruce, not wanting to draw attention to the fact that he could communicate with the mer in several languages, forced himself to stay quiet.
The release itself wasn't elaborate, though no doubt video editing, music, and narration would dress it up a lot. Dick was laid in a sling and lowered into the water, Bruce lying on the deck to keep hold of his hand until they were forced apart. Dick started squirming, trying to get out, and immediately shot away as soon as he was freed. He paused for a long time, looking around both above and below the water. He spent another while swimming uncertainly around the boat.
"B!" he started calling, "Come here! Come here!"
Bruce, practically glued to the railing, was not allowed to answer, and tears smarted his eyes every time the little mer stopped and begged for reassurance. He could hear Judy in the background, ordering the cameramen to edit out any footage of the mer speaking human language. The reporters occasionally asked Bruce questions, but his answers were brusque and unhelpful, so they finally gave up.
The boat and the two remaining news crafts began heading back to shore around sunset. Dick followed behind them for a while, calling and then screaming for Bruce, but the captain was ordered to increase speed and they eventually left the calf behind. Bruce was shaking.
TBC
A/N: When I started writing this fic, my only knowledge about marine mammal parks was basically from Free Willy, childhood visits to SeaWorld, and a nonfiction book I read a while ago about orcas in captivity. I hadn't intended to do deliberate research for this fic, but ended up reading up on it after all. XD Along with many online articles, I would also recommend the following books:
Death at SeaWorld by David Kirby. This is the book I read years ago; it's a very thorough and well-researched account of orcas in captivity compared with orcas in the wild.
Beneath the Surface by John Hargrove. Memoir by a former SeaWorld trainer who eventually left the company and, despite how much he adored working with the orcas, is now against holding them in captivity.
Blackfish, a very influential documentary about orcas in captivity, using the death of Dawn Brancheau as a focal point.
Keiko: The Untold Story of the Star of Free Willy. Documentary that focuses specifically on Keiko, the orca who played Willy and was also pretty much the only captive orca who was released back into the wild. (Although he never did find his family or re-integrate with wild orcas, he did learn how to find his own food, was eventually permitted to roam wherever he pleased, and happily lived the last five years of his life in natural waters.)
Free Willy. Although this is a fictional movie, it had a very strong impact on the captive orca issue in real life and made quite a lot of people interested in the subject.
