Gifts From the Sea, a Batman fanfic by Raberba girl

Batfam Bingo 2019: AU: Zoo

Chapter 12 - The King (rough draft 2)

As Dick went through puberty, his red/green/yellow coloring darkened to black and blue, and the highlights gradually spread until his once mostly black hair had turned entirely blue. Bruce had to practically bribe the school to let Dick keep attending with 'dyed' hair, though it helped that Dick usually kept his hair covered in public.

Unfortunately, the boy also proved that mer teenagers were just as rebellious and stubborn as human ones.

He and Bruce started having their first real arguments, some of them quite explosive. The mer would often end the fights by ripping off his human clothes, hand-marching out to the ocean, and vanishing into the waves; sometimes he'd be gone for days. Bruce was always worried sick about him. Dick was better trained now and the ultimate goal was to get him permanently living in the wild, but he was still just a kid swimming alone in the ocean. The only thing that kept Bruce from losing his mind was that the mer had agreed to be microchipped, so at least Bruce could stare at his tablet screen, obsessively tracking the little blue dot.

Every fight cut Bruce deeply and even old ones remained vivid in his memory, but the cooldown periods seemed to do wonders for Dick. He always returned home in high spirits, barging into the house as if he'd never left, wolfing down his favorite treats, and cuddling with Bruce. It was a long time before Bruce managed to get through a reunion without shedding any tears.

Not all the separations stemmed from anger. Dick started spending a lot of nights in the ocean, close to shore but with natural saltwater cradling his body and fish passing him by. Sometimes he would accompany Bruce out in a boat, shout excitedly about a whale or something that had captured his attention, and disappear for hours.

When Dick grew literate enough, he started, with Bruce's supervision, getting active on the Internet. He lurked, then started participating in, several online groups and message boards focused on anti-captivity activism, and eventually started his own. He made many friends and provided them with a lot of insider info, though he agreed with Bruce that it wouldn't be wise to trust even activists with the revelation that he himself was a mer since he hadn't even met them face to face.

Dick was fourteen years old the day he crawled out of the waves and brought two strangers into the house with him.

Bruce, who'd just been coming out of the kitchen with a cup of coffee, stopped dead and stared at the strangers dripping seawater all over his living room floor. The man was very muscular, with long blond hair and a gold-and-green outfit that seemed to be made of scales. The woman was stunningly beautiful, with crimson hair and a bright green suit that also seemed to be made of scales. She wore a tiara, and the man was holding an honest-to-God trident.

"This is my human dad!" Dick announced, stopping his scooter board at Bruce's feet, hugging his leg with one arm, and waving the other in proud presentation.

"Hello," Bruce said warily, setting down his mug on a nearby credenza and tensing for a fight.

"He says you rescued him from ABAZ," the man spoke.

Bruce wondered how this apparent sea person knew about the zoo, and with enough familiarity to use the acronym. He said it too comfortably to be simply repeating whatever Dick had told him.

"I was under the impression that humans think we are chattel to be exploited and used," the woman said, her expression harder than her companion's. "What makes you so different that you would decide to save a legless child from his tormentors?"

"They didn't see him as a child. I did."

"Meraaaa," Dick whined, "don't be mean. Dad is good."

"Bruce," Bruce said. "My name is Bruce."

The woman merely tilted her head, but the man's eyes widened in recognition. "Wait - Bruce? You're Bruce Wayne, the Mermaid Man."

"How do you know that?" Bruce exclaimed. He was a local celebrity in Amnesty Bay and, for different reasons, in Gotham, but he wasn't usually recognized elsewhere.

The man smiled a little and extended his hand. "Arthur Curry. Born and raised in Amnesty Bay."

"You're not...a mer?" Bruce said, warily accepting the handshake.

"I'm Atlantean- She's Atlantean, anyway; I'm half. Dad was a fisherman. I only got dragged into the whole Atlantis thing recently."

"Atlantis," Bruce said flatly, mind racing as he suddenly started considering the implications of this.

"King of Atlantis," the woman elaborated, throwing Arthur a loaded look.

"She's Mera," Arthur introduced.

"Dad," Dick said, slithering around in his excitement, "they're like me but they want me, they don't think I'm a freak!"

"Put a sleeve on," Bruce said, because going into Dad Mode was a lot easier than wondering frantically if these sea people were going to take his son away from him.

Dick trilled impatiently and headed to the nearest stash of tail sleeves, and Bruce fetched a washcloth to mop up the water, slime, and stray scales Dick had left on the floor.

The king of the sea and his...consort? personal assistant? bodyguard? stayed for a couple of hours, learning about Dick's captivity and how he'd been living in freedom. They, particularly Mera, had a lot of tips and offers when it came to preparing Dick for life in the ocean, and while Bruce was taking copious notes on that, Arthur was going through all the evidence Bruce had collected over the years about how marine animals, particularly mer, suffered in captivity. Dick himself soon got bored and played video games for a while until Bruce made him start working on all the schoolwork he'd missed.

"I'm shutting Ocean World down," Arthur said darkly as he stared at the timeline Bruce had compiled of the breeding history of Dick's mother, Mary. "And ABAZ, and every other place that thinks it's acceptable to rape my people."

Dick's head popped up with a frown when he heard the word 'rape,' and Bruce grimaced fiercely at Arthur.

" 'Rape' is when you make someone have sex but they don't want to," Dick said solemnly. "My mer dad said when I'm older, if they put me in the water with a woman, leave her alone if she doesn't want me, and be gentle and let her be boss if she does. The other ones before Dad, they weren't gentle and Mom got really hurt. I won't ever do to anyone what they did to Mom."

Bruce felt like there was ice flowing through his veins. He'd had absolutely no idea that Dick had been aware of what had happened to his mother.

"These other kids," Arthur said, his voice shaking with fury, "where are they? I'm getting them out."

Dick braced his palms on the floor and rose to his full upper body height, staring at the king intently.

"Raya's dead," Bruce said. "Fatally injured in a fight with another mer, and she doesn't have any surviving children. Sonia's in a research laboratory in Maine; I wasn't able to get access to her."

Arthur stood up. "I'm getting her out. I'm going to save your sister, Dick."

Dick dipped his head and smiled fiercely.

"It'll most likely have to be by force," Bruce said. "I don't think you'll be able to hide your powers on a mission like this."

"You'll be declaring yourself to the surface world," Mera added. "Are you ready for that, Arthur?"

Arthur twitched his shoulders in a tense shrug. "Orm's plan was to start a war; revealing ourselves is inevitable. Might as well be because of this as anything else."

o.o.o

As soon as Bruce realized that a certain king of the sea was on the news, he turned on the TV, which stayed on the rest of the day. Arthur, dubbed 'Aquaman' by the news even after he revealed his first name, had made a dramatic entrance at the Maine research lab. There was a widely-circulating video clip of him, with Mera at his side, striding out of the facility with a frightened little mermaid in his arms. He stopped to make a short speech to recording bystanders, announcing who he was, what he was doing, and that he planned to visit the rest of his captive subjects and see how they were being treated. Then he retreated dramatically into the sea.

That evening, Arthur came, alone and quiet, to the beach house. "Hey, Dick," he greeted when the mer raced to meet him.

"Sona! Where's Sona?!" the boy demanded, mispronouncing the name in his rush.

"Sonia's safe, Dick, down in Atlantis. Traumatized, but Mera and plenty of others are tending to her." Arthur paused. "I was wondering if it would be all right if I could bring you down to Atlantis with me, Dick." Although he addressed the mer, he raised his eyes to Bruce, and Dick immediately turned and stared at Bruce pleadingly, too.

"I- Of course," Bruce said, trying not to let the words get caught in his suddenly tight throat. "I- Is there any chance I...could come, too?"

"That can be arranged," Arthur said.

"I... We need to pack," Bruce said as Dick spun in place and cheered. "I...I don't know...how long we'll be down there." He blinked. "Just to be clear, how long are you offering to host Dick?"

Arthur looked surprised. "He's a mer, he's always welcome. But he's your son, too; I'm not going to take him away from you. You two can work things out between you."

"We're going to Atlantiiiiiis!" Dick yelled, tossing himself across the floor.

"Dick, please," Bruce said when the boy nearly knocked over a side table.

Arthur went back home for the night, and Bruce spent hours packing and sending messages and making arrangements. Dick was too excited to sleep for a while, but finally crashed in Bruce's bed around midnight.

Bruce carefully lay down beside him and very softly ran a hand through his hair, wondering with an aching heart if this was the beginning of the end. He had always meant to give the mer true freedom, and though he knew it was the right thing for Dick, he hadn't expected it to happen when his boy was still so young. Four years left until official adulthood, the time had passed so quickly...

He kissed Dick's hair, carried him to the bathroom, took off his sleeve, and let him sleep in the tub.

TBC

A/N: I realized...in hindsight...that mer probably ought to be super-strong on land like Atlanteans are. X''''D Oh well; just...ignore that, too late to fix...

In New 52 Nightwing, Raya was a childhood friend of Dick's at Haly's who reunited with him when they were adults, briefly dated him, got sucked into a stupid Comic Book Drama revenge plot against him, and eventually died horribly in the "Death of the Family" story arc. Sonia is the daughter of Tony Zucco; she's not a villain in either pre-Flashpoint ("The Black Mirror" story arc) or New 52 Nightwing, but she's more sympathetic in N52, helping out Dick financially when he's struggling to run Haly's Circus as its new owner.

"Siren song" outtake: This was in the original draft, but it started making me very spiritually uneasy because it was too much like witchcraft, so I cut it. Figured I'd include it as an outtake, though.

When Dick was fourteen, he exhibited a behavior that was still half in the realm of myth and legend.

Bruce was on the deck of the yacht, reading a book and feeling vaguely sad and lonely. Then he heard...something. And he looked up.

The next thing he knew, he was swimming in the open ocean; the yacht was nowhere in sight; the sky had changed. Time had passed in the blink of an eye. He was exhausted, he wasn't wearing a life vest, and he had NO IDEA HOW HE HAD GOTTEN OUT HERE.

The utter silence behind the natural ocean sounds sent a shudder through his bones. Then he nearly screamed when the crown of a head and a pair of brilliant sapphire eyes emerged without fanfare from the water almost right in front of him.

"RICHARD!" Bruce shrieked.

Sheepishly, Dick rose a little farther out of the water and asked verbally, "You gotta knife?"

"What?"

"I'm...stuck..."

Dick had apparently been swimming with a dolphin pod when two of them, and then Dick while trying to rescue them, had gotten caught in a huge accretion of plastic. The pod was long gone by now, but Dick's tail and left arm were bound by hopelessly tangled long plastic strips. Bruce used the last of his strength cutting the mer loose, then fell asleep as Dick swam powerfully, towing him.

Bruce woke up when Dick started nudging him. They were right beside the boat, but Dick couldn't get up on deck on his own. "Where are the ropes?" Bruce groaned, dragging himself up with great effort. He usually left some way to get back up if he ever left the boat.

"You forgot?"

"I don't even remember leaving the boat!"

"Oh...sorry..."

The phrase settled in the back of Bruce's mind, but he didn't give it any conscious thought until they were both safe, curled up together in a blanket nest by the heater. Bruce woke up again in the middle of the night, found Dick snacking in the kitchen, and demanded, "Sorry for what?"

Dick smiled sheepishly. Then he began to Sing.

When Bruce came back to himself, his whole body was pressed hard against Dick's as if he was trying to crush him into the floor.

"Ow!" Dick was laughing beneath him. "Squishing me!"

"What-?!" Bruce scrambled off, shocked and absolutely confused.

"I have to practice," Dick mused. "There has to be a way to sing without you trying to fuse with me."

"You- you were singing just now?! Siren-singing?!" He had heard Dick sing before, usually to silly pop songs. He had never before heard that ethereal Song, vocalizations that seemed to reach straight from the heart of the sea into Bruce's and draw him as close as possible to the beckoning siren. "That's how you called me off the boat all the way to where you were trapped in the plastic?!"

"Sorry, I panicked..."

They spent weeks experimenting and practicing. Bruce found he could resist the call, with difficulty, if he was expecting it, but if Dick caught him so unaware that he didn't even hear the song start, he also wasn't aware of the need to resist. He learned to react with 'tensed willpower,' so to speak, anytime he started to pick up on the subtle cues that a siren song was about to start.

*the rest was technical and boring*

SPOILERS BELOW

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This is from Batfam Bingo 2019: Switching:

The merman opened his mouth and...vocalized. All four Bruces immediately lunged at him, getting in each other's way and practically tackling the mer to the sand, who broke off his song with an alarmed shriek.

"GET THE HELL OFF HIM!" *selkie-Jason* yelled.