Gifts From the Sea, a Batman fanfic by Raberba girl
Batfam Bingo 2019: AU: Zoo
Chapter 13 - A Beautiful Cage (rough draft 2)
An odd little vehicle arrived the next morning, piloted by a silent, stoic Atlantean who waited as Bruce put his luggage inside and climbed in himself. "Stick close, Dick," Bruce instructed sternly, grabbing the mer's arm as he slid past. "Are you listening to me? Don't run off. I don't want something to happen to you before we even get there."
"Yes yes okay!"
Although Dick didn't wander too far during the journey, it was a close thing. Bruce watched anxiously as the mer constantly darted around in excitement, sometimes out of sight. "Dick, please," Bruce grumbled.
Fortunately, they reached the city without trouble. By then, Dick had gotten tired and was hanging onto the vehicle, letting it pull him along so he didn't have to swim. As soon as the shining city came in sight, though, he launched toward it, and Bruce lost track of him amidst the swarms of swimming people and giant, apparently domesticated sea creatures.
The vehicle came to rest in a chamber that was drained of all water. More Atlanteans entered and encased Bruce in what seemed like some sort of air-suit made out of magic or something, then led him out into a corridor of the submerged palace. Bruce could feel some of the water pressure and the chill even through the air-suit. "Where is my child?" Bruce immediately asked in mer-sign.
The Atlanteans stared at him. There was some conferring too quiet for Bruce to hear through the suit, then one of them hurried off. As they waited, Bruce asked about Dick again.
"Forgive us, we thought you used the same surface language as King Arthur," one of them said. Their voices sounded slightly distorted to Bruce's ears, but he could understand them. "None of us currently present know the flying fish dialect, but we have sent for someone who does."
"Wait - you know English?" Bruce asked.
"King Arthur selected us specifically because he wanted your escorts to be able to communicate with you."
"What did you mean by 'dialect'? Is there more than one mer language?"
The linguist soon arrived and answered questions until the edge had been taken off of Bruce's distraction and he got back to the point. "Where is my son? Dick, the mer who came with me."
"He is with his sister. We will take you to him."
Bruce was led through a maze of corridors until they reached a chamber where Sonia, Dick's young sister, was curled in a nest of soft seaweed, with a group of humanoid Atlanteans bustling around her and the room. At the sight of Bruce, the mermaid screamed in fear, and Dick, who had been hugging and murmuring to her, shot toward Bruce. "Go away!"
"I'm sorry, I-"
Dick pushed him into the hall and to the side, out of sight of the occupants of the room. "What are you doing here?!"
"Looking for you! I was worried about you!"
"I'm FINE. Go away!"
"Son," Bruce signed hesitantly, hurt, not sure what else to say.
Dick softened. "Sorry, Dad. I love you and I'll see you later, but I want to be with my sister now, okay?"
After a moment, Bruce made himself nod. Dick cocked his head sympathetically and gave him a tight hug, then vanished back into the chamber.
He was so...quick, and so graceful. Bruce was not used to seeing him like this. Dick on land was awkward by necessity, whether dragging himself across the floor or on a scooter board or in a chair, or walking on his hands. The times Bruce did get to see him swim, it was almost always from a higher vantage point. This was...new, watching Dick move in his natural element while at eye level.
'He's home now,' Bruce thought, his heart sinking.
o.o.o
During the few days Bruce spent in Atlantis, he spent a lot of time in his room. The magic suit was not entirely reliable, as he discovered when it gave out after a few hours and he nearly drowned. Arthur gave him a human diving suit to replace it with, which was better, but Bruce was still very clumsy and slow compared to all the Atlanteans surrounding him, and the disgust or pity almost everyone seemed to treat him with made him feel disabled. ...He was disabled in this environment, and it sucked.
What made it even worse was that Dick was pretty much the only one who knew ASL, so Bruce's only form of communicating underwater was the specific dialect of Dick's parents, which not many people here understood and which turned out to be at an eight-year-old's linguistic level, due to Dick's being so young when he lost the only other 'speakers' of it. Bruce felt incredibly isolated, especially since Arthur and Mera were usually busy and Dick was gone most of the time, reveling in the novelty and excitement of being in a city of sea-people.
Bruce couldn't leave to explore outside the palace except in a vehicle, since the immense water pressure would crush him otherwise.
He tried for a couple of days to look around the palace and to browse through the library (despite most of its materials being in Atlantean), but it was annoying having to go back to his room or to a docking bay so frequently to switch out oxygen tanks. Traveling alone was dangerous because a lot of Atlanteans were prejudiced against the surface dwellers who poisoned their waters, but Bruce chafed whenever he was accompanied by an interpreter and bodyguards.
The few times he was able to be with Dick outside his room, it was mostly just him drifting awkwardly on the side as Dick played games with Atlanteans that were beyond Bruce's physical ability, or had conversations with them in English, which the mer had no problem adapting to the different density of water. The few times Dick did remember to pay attention to his father, it was, to Bruce's humiliation, mostly fussing over whether there was enough oxygen left in Bruce's current tank or whether he was able to keep up with the sea-people's stronger swimming, as if Dick was now the parent and Bruce the helpless child.
'I can't STAND this.' Just a few days into their visit, Bruce had given up and now spent all his time moping around his room. There was no Internet service or cell phone reception down here, so he was desperately bored and tried to come up with ways to occupy his time that weren't reading the books he'd brought, studying the Atlantean language, or exercising within the confines of his chamber.
'This is what Dick felt like,' he thought bleakly, sitting on a chair and staring out at the waters thriving with people outside. 'This is what his parents felt like, and all the other mer in captivity; all the orcas and dolphins, ALL of them. All those years...confined, bored out of their minds, out of their element, alone, dependent on their captors for everything...'
It had been even worse for Dick and his people. Miserable as Bruce was, at least he wasn't being forced to constantly perform or to breed, wasn't receiving inadequate care or being subjected to frightening, unexplained procedures or being forcibly separated from his loved ones. 'We're monsters. Humans are monsters. We don't deserve them. I don't deserve him...'
The one highlight of his day was always in the evening (not that he could actually tell it was evening except by his watch), when Dick would finally come in to sleep.
As usual, Dick came swimming through the transparent barrier very low so that when he slid through it, there was barely any drop when he hit the ground. He was already chattering before he'd even got his whole tail through.
"Dad, Rampage had his babies today!" he exclaimed, referencing his favorite mega-seahorse in the stables. "There were five of them, almost as big as me, they're so cute!" Dick himself didn't seem to be giving it a second thought, but it pained Bruce to watch his beloved son go from being a beautiful dancer in the water to pathetic and crippled in this human room, literally crawling on the floor. "Except the littlest one, I mean, she's still cute but she's smaller than the others," Dick continued as he stopped by the box of tail sleeves, not bothering with hydrating solution before he slipped it on because he only needed it to protect the bedding for a little while. He continued on his way to Bruce. "They said I can ride her when she's older. Isn't that cool?"
"It is, Dick," Bruce replied, helping Dick onto the bed. "I'm...very glad you're so happy here."
"I LOVE Atlantis!" Dick sign-yelled, then snuggled up to his father, who held him close and tried to savor what might be one of their very last embraces. "I wish I could live here foreverrrrr!"
"You...you might, Dick."
"Really?!"
"Yes. I...have to think about it a little more-" That was a lie; Bruce was just procrastinating on what he already meant to do. "-but there's a good chance you'll be able to stay for good."
"YES, you're the best, Dad!"
As was their usual custom, they cuddled for a while before bedtime. At home, Dick usually slept in the backyard pool or in the ocean, but he'd always been a tactile child and, even as a teenager, liked the comfort of nestling in his father's arms. Bruce had wondered if he should start discouraging it as the boy grew older, but then found out that members of wild mer pods kept in close physical contact while they rested so that they wouldn't lose each other in the currents.
When Dick's upper body started to get too dry, he sighed and sleepily started to crawl away, intending to either sleep in his sister's quarters or to settle for the night in the tub in Bruce's room.
"Dick," Bruce called softly, "I...need to talk to you."
Dick frowned, went to dip himself in the water outside, then hurried back. "What's wrong?"
"Nothing, nothing, I- just..." Bruce swallowed. "Dick, I think I'm going to leave tomorrow."
"But you just said we'd stay! There's still a lot I want to do, and my sister needs me!"
"I know. Don't worry, Dick, you can stay here. I'll send down anything you want from the house, and...I have to doublecheck with Arthur, but I'm sure he won't have a problem with you staying here permanently."
Dick's brow was furrowed. "You just said you're leaving."
"Yes, I'm leaving. You can stay. This is your home now, Dick."
Dick suddenly went still and widened his eyes. "No, Dad. This is our home. This is your room!" He switched to signing. "This is the best place to live, why would you want to leave?!"
"Dick, I can't live here! I can't sit here locked in this- this jail cell anymore!"
"It's not jail! You can leave whenever you want, King had good things brought to make you comfortable and happy, it's not-!"
"Dick, I will die if I set foot outside the palace! It's a struggle just to get each air tank to last twenty or thirty minutes! I'm stuck in this room, Dick, I can't live like this anymore."
"But-!"
"You remember the zoo? Those tanks you were trapped in? This is my zoo tank, Dick. This place is ABAZ for me. I'm trapped and bored and lonely, and I'll lose my mind if I have to stay here much longer."
Dick stared at him for a very long moment. Then he bowed his head and started to cry.
"Dickie..."
Dick could do nothing but sob as Bruce held him tightly for a while. The mer finally signed with unsteady hands, still crying, "No one here hurts you like they hurt me! This isn't jail! I don't want you to leave!"
"I have to...Dickie, I have to, I'm so sorry, chum..."
The boy seemed to break in Bruce's arms. "I'll come with you...!"
"No, Dickie."
"I'll come... Better me...in jail...than you...!"
"No, Dick. No. Hush. No. Dickie, I have always wanted you to be free. This is your freedom, this is your home. I was always temporary, I was never going to be enough for you, Dick. Hush, it's all right, you are very happy here and you're going to keep being happy, you don't need me anymore, you finally found your people, Dick, it's all right, ssshhh...it's all right, Dickie..."
"No...! No, it's not...! Dad...! B...! B, don't go...! Why do my parents always leave me...?!"
o.o.o
By midmorning the next day, Bruce was packed and Arthur had a vehicle waiting. The Atlanteans bid Bruce a polite goodbye; Dick was clingy and in low spirits.
"Goodbye, c-h-u-m," Bruce signed when there was no reason left to linger. Dick simply stared back at him, not replying except for the grief in his sapphire eyes. Bruce finally turned away and stepped through the barrier, keeping the suit on but pulling away his breathing mask. He started to get into the vehicle.
Dick burst through the barrier and slapped to the floor with little of his usual grace, crawling frantically toward his father. "Dad! Dad!"
Bruce turned back and hastily scooped him up. "What is it, son?"
"...Nothing! NOTHING! I hate you!" Dick sobbed, pressing his face into Bruce's shoulder and beating at his back, tail curling around him as if trying to hold him in place. After several minutes, Mera finally approached and held out her arms. Dick had gone limp by this time and didn't resist being handed over. Mera stepped back into the water, and Dick, still in her arms, watched as his second father departed, ascended, and disappeared.
TBC
