Gifts From the Sea, a Batman fanfic by Raberba girl
Batfam Bingo 2019: AU: Zoo
Chapter 15 - Robin (rough draft 2)
Bruce, with a bike trailer to carry his supplies, went first to pick up a form from the lobby of the closed post office. He was on his way to do some shopping when he heard a young, distressed voice suddenly cry out, "Leave me ALONE!"
Bruce paused. That one high voice was rising amidst a deeper murmuring commotion that he had, until now, been dismissing as background noise, just a group of young men hanging out.
"Fuck you!" the high voice screeched again, immediately followed by bursts of masculine laughter.
Bruce, already off his bike, gripped the guardrail and stared hard into the twilight shadows. The road he was on ran along a cliff's edge, though he could see a narrow path winding down the rocks. Without thinking twice, he started making his way down the footpath.
"NOOO!" the child screamed, sounding anguished. "GIVE IT BACK! GIVE IT BACK! GIVE IT BACK!"
Bruce practically dropped the last foot onto a ledge that finally gave him a view of what was happening a little lower down. A group of five young men, ranging in age from mid-teens to mid-twenties, were laughing as they shoved around a boy who looked about ten.
"WHAT'S GOING ON HERE?" Bruce boomed, standing straight and trying to project an air of authority.
The men all whipped back to look at him in surprise. Bruce recognized three of them, though he'd never seen the child before. "What's it to you, man?" one of the strangers challenged. The three locals shuffled uneasily.
"Paul, Zack, Darren," Bruce addressed them sternly. "How big a problem do you want to make this?"
"Whatever," Zack snapped. "They're gonna run outta beer before we get there; let's go."
He was only nineteen, but Bruce made no comment on the suggestion of underage drinking and stood aside to let him pass, meeting the teen's challenging look squarely. Paul mumbled something and followed, Darren on his heels.
One of the strangers muttered under his breath and then hurled the red garment he'd been holding down the cliff.
"NOOOO!" screamed the child, who'd been tense and silent up to this point. The man holding him threw him back against the rocks, laughing.
Bruce lost track of things then because he was so focused on grabbing the boy to stop him from flinging himself into the ocean after his sweater. "Hey, stop! Stop, are you trying to kill yourself?!"
"GIVE IT BACK! GIVE IT BACK! LET ME FUCKING GO, I NEED MY HOODIE, I NEED MY-!"
"I'll get it!" Bruce bellowed, having to shout to be heard over the boy's frantic screams. "I'll get it! I'll get it for you! Stop!"
The boy stared at him wildly, panting. His tormentors were long gone by now.
"I'll get it for you," Bruce said again, squeezing the boy's shoulders a little in emphasis. "Just stay here. Do you understand me? I will fetch your hoodie and bring it to you, but you need to stay here. Tell me you understand."
"Get my hoodie or I'll fuckin' kill you," the boy hissed.
Time enough to lecture him later. Right now, Bruce had a mission.
The water wasn't deep enough here for him to safely dive, so he had to make his way down the hazardous path carefully enough to be safe but fast enough to stop the boy from screeching after him. Then he had to find the garment, which took almost as long as descending the cliff had, then make his way back up again.
The boy was on the path, practically sliding down it on his butt because of how steep it was. As soon as Bruce was near, the child seized a tuft of hardy weeds with one hand to anchor himself and reached out desperately with the other. "Give it back!"
Bruce held it just out of reach. "I'd like to hear a 'Thank you,' first."
"FUCKING THANK YOU! THANK FUCKING YOU; GIVE ME MY FUCKING HOODIE, YOU BASTARD!"
Bruce clenched his jaw, but started to hand over the garment. The boy seized it and ripped it out of his grasp, then scrambled to put it on, sobbing uncontrollably.
"Listen, son, nothing is worth risking your life like that, especially a sweater that's easily replaceable-"
"Fuck...you...!" the boy wheezed through his tears, then somehow clawed his way up the cliff with one hand while clutching the front of his hoodie tight with the other. He had vanished by the time Bruce got back to the road.
Bruce sighed deeply, then tried to tidy himself up a bit, got back on his bike, and went shopping.
He had finished and was heading to the dock when he saw a couple of men bending over something on the ground behind a convenience store. It was dark by now and the lights at the front didn't reach the little alley, but Bruce thought he recognized Frank, the owner. "Frank?" he called, "Something wrong?"
"Maybe he can take it," the other man suggested, and Frank waved Bruce over.
On the ground was a raccoon trap, and inside was a very miserable-looking, half-grown seal pup.
"Something's been stealing things I leave out, breaking into dumpsters so other critters can get in," Frank explained. "Set out a trap for it, somehow caught a seal instead."
"I'll take it with me," Bruce offered. "I can release it on the island."
They extracted the pup from the trap and Bruce wrapped it in his jacket before nestling it in the trailer among his shopping bags. He had made it all the way home and was unwrapping the animal when he realized, with the help of the porch lights, that the creature was injured.
"Oh," he murmured, gently parting bloodied fur. The pup yelped and jerked, trying to bite him. "Ssshhh, ssshh, lad, I'm not going to hurt you. Are you hungry?"
He still had plenty of stored fish left over from...having to feed the last young occupant of his home. He fetched some and offered it to the little pup, who gulped it down.
Bruce a while fussing over the animal, and finally texted Alfred to let him know that he might not be returning home immediately after all. With the pup in a nest of blankets nearby, Bruce started researching - he already knew a lot about basic marine animal rehabilitation, but he'd never specifically looked up how to care for seals. By the time he leaned back in his chair, feeling slightly more confident than he had before, the pup had fallen asleep, snoring softly.
"Poor little guy," Bruce murmured, examining the creature without touching it. "I'll stay and look after you until you're back on your feet, all right?"
Over the next few days, Bruce doted on his new charge, whom he named Robin after the unusual coloring of the fur, and faithfully fed and tended to him. The pup could be skittish and aggressive at times, shying away or yelling or snapping at sudden movements, but he was extremely intelligent. (Not to mention unbearably cute - Bruce nearly ran out of room on the memory card, he took so many pictures and videos of the pup making his adorably awkward wiggling way across the floor.) Robin showed what seemed to be clear disdain for simple or demeaning games like playing fetch, so Bruce devised ones that were more in line with what a human child might enjoy.
The pup was astonishingly good at Memory, poking at matched cards with his snout. When Bruce tried Candy Land, which...the last orphaned sea creature he'd cared for had enjoyed, Robin barked and then knocked the board aside with his flipper as if to say, "This game is stupid."
'Don't anthropomorphize,' Bruce told himself. Though it wasn't as if Robin flipped board games in general - the seal watched intently for forty minutes when Bruce played Monopoly with two pieces. The creature's intelligence seemed unnatural at times.
click
Robin was also inexplicably housetrained - he would go outside and do his business in the sand, covering it up like a cat, and would yell at Bruce as if he didn't want to be watched.
click
When the weather was too bad for him to go out, he ended up eliminating on the bathroom floor, then hid for a while afterwards as if he was ashamed even though that was the place accessible to him that was easiest to clean up.
The pup seemed intrigued by television, too, often watching it with Bruce. Bruce was interested to begin to note differences in the pup's reactions. Robin seemed tense when the news was on, casually interested when it was the old black-and-white films Bruce liked, and fascinated when it was animation.
click
Strange things began happening, often at night when Bruce was asleep. He started to notice things going missing, usually items of objective value that he didn't personally care about. He was utterly perplexed when, looking for a spare belt one afternoon to replace one that had broken, he discovered most of the lost items stashed in a backpack in a guest room closet he hadn't opened in almost a year.
Food would go missing, which he might have blamed on Robin except that the animal shouldn't be able to get into the sealed containers, especially when they were in the refrigerator or stored high. Yet Bruce kept finding empty food packages in the trash almost every morning.
click
"Well," Bruce said, checking Robin's scabbed-over injury one afternoon, "looks like you and I will be parting ways pretty soon." The injury was actually healed enough to release the animal into the sea, but Bruce was...stalling. It was nice to have someone else around the house again. "I'm glad to see you're getting better."
Robin made a whuffing sound and, as soon as he was released, wiggled his way to the basket of toy balls by the wall. Although he refused to play fetch, he enjoyed a modified form of soccer, which Bruce set up a camera to record (baby seal rush-wiggling to block a ball and then headbutt it back toward Bruce was so - friggin' - cute, and the pup always got irritated whenever Bruce tried to leave his post to start recording).
One night, Bruce woke up to what sounded like burglars rummaging around downstairs. He glanced at the seal nest and found it empty, then grabbed the baseball bat by his bed and soundlessly made his way down the stairs.
Then he just stood in the kitchen entryway for a while, staring. The adolescent boy who was busily putting together a sandwich didn't notice him until he'd sat down at the island and was raising the food to his lips. Then he froze, mouth open, the sandwich an inch away.
The next moment, the boy had flung the food down and was clambering up into the kitchen sink, yanking frantically at the window latch.
Bruce propped the baseball bat against the wall. "Feel free to stay and eat your sandwich here."
The boy paused and glowered at Bruce over his shoulder.
"I know you," Bruce suddenly realized. "The hoodie boy."
"Yeah?" the boy snapped.
After a long pause, Bruce went to the refrigerator. He put together a sandwich of his own, then brought the plate to the opposite side of the island and sat down to eat it. When he pushed the other plate a little closer to the edge, the boy finally unfroze and warily crept closer.
"You got a name?" Bruce asked.
"Don't gotta tell you."
"Where's my seal? Did you hurt him?"
"Don' know nothin' 'bout a seal," the boy snarled with unwarranted ferocity.
"Because if you hurt Robin, I'm going to call the police. If you didn't, then you're welcome to stay the rest of the night. I have plenty of guest rooms."
"I didn't hurt your dumb seal! Stupid thing's probably hiding."
They finished their meal in silence. Bruce put the dishes in the sink, then led the way upstairs. The boy followed at a distance and shuffled wordlessly into the guest room Bruce showed him once the man stepped a prudent distance away from the door. "The bathroom's right here. I'll find a change of clothes and leave them outside your door. If Robin's all right, you're welcome to breakfast, too, and then we'll talk."
"Whatever." Hoodie Boy slammed the door shut with, again, wholly unnecessary violence. Bruce sighed deeply and went to look for his seal.
He got worried for a while because the animal wasn't anywhere he checked, but then, when he heard the quiet sound of a door shutting in the bedroom hall, he came back up the stairs and found the pup wiggling toward him. "Robin!" Bruce caught him up and hugged him close, breathing a little harder than usual. "Robin...are you all right? Are you hurt?"
He carried the seal into his room and set him down, checking him over. The pup seemed unusually docile yet tense, watching Bruce intently as he allowed himself to be manhandled.
"You're okay," Bruce murmured, more to himself than the seal. He picked up Robin and held him for a while. "You're okay, lad. Stay here where I can keep an eye on you, all right?" He settled the pup in his nest and then went to rig the door and windows with strings of trinkets that would clink together and warn him if anyone entered. Then he lay down on the bed, though he couldn't sleep for a while now that he finally had time to ponder what had just happened.
'It's too far to swim; how did that boy make it all the way out here? Did he steal a boat? Where did Robin go? He couldn't possibly-'
'Possibly.' Hah. Bruce had a mer son; Atlantis existed in real life and was populated by water-breathers; Bruce's best friend was a flying, laser-eyed, icy wind-exhaling alien; there was an Amazon warrior in D.C. and a red streak in Central City and a green flying person in Coast City.
clickclickclickclick
'Oh my God.'
Bruce got back out of bed and spent a couple of hours browsing folklore web sites. Then he leaned over the nest and stared at his little sleeping seal for a long time.
o.o.o
Although all the clues added up, Bruce didn't have any actual proof, and he had to keep up appearances in the meantime. "What's your name?" he asked the next time he caught Hoodie Boy raiding his kitchen at midnight. Actually, that was something he wanted to know regardless.
The kid glared, but finally mumbled through a mouthful of ice cream, "Jason."
Jason. Good to know.
"You realize it would be irresponsible of me to make no attempt to get in touch with your legal guardian."
"Parents are dead, fosters tried to sell me for parts," Jason spat. "I'll just run away again if you turn me in, and this time I ain't goin' anywhere near you."
"All right, all right, easy, lad."
Jason squinted at him suspiciously, so Bruce let his gaze wander and casually took another bite of his own ice cream. "You really okay with street trash breaking inta your fancy beach mansion and stealing your sh- your crap?" the boy finally asked.
"You are not trash," Bruce said firmly. "No child is, regardless of their parentage or life circumstances."
Jason eyed him in an assessing way.
"Obviously you're in a rough spot right now, and it's against my conscience to let you sleep on the streets. I have plenty of food, I have plenty of room in my house. You're welcome to stay here whenever you need."
Jason fidgeted, drawing shapes in the ice cream residue with his spoon.
"Do you like board games, Jason? Or cards?"
"I like books. Can't...read 'em, usually. But..." Jason's eyes slid toward the living room, where the built-in shelves were full of books.
"You can borrow any that you like, whenever you like."
"Why d'you live here all by yourself?" Jason asked suddenly. "Except your dumb seal. You don't act like yer on vacation."
"I'm not. This is technically one of my family's vacation homes, but I moved here to live a few years ago. I needed the seclusion. I was actually right on the verge of moving back to Gotham when I met y- when I found Robin. He was hurt, so I stayed to take care of him."
Jason fiddled with his spoon, staring intently at his empty bowl. "You're from Gotham?"
"Yes. Well, technically Bristol; but yes, Gotham."
Jason's eyes snapped to him. "Wait - wait, you're-?!"
Bruce suddenly realized that he'd never introduced himself. "My name is Bruce Wayne."
"Bruce Way-?!" Jason abruptly jumped off the chair, paced in an agitated circle, then stopped in front of Bruce. "What the hell ya doin' all the way out here?!"
"I like the ocean," Bruce said. "You ever heard of the Mermaid Man of Amnesty Bay?"
"What the hell?" Jason said, looking genuinely confused. If he recognized Bruce as a Wayne but didn't connect him to mer, then he must be a Gotham native but probably hadn't been in the city for a while.
"Never mind."
Jason rumpled his own hair. "I'm gonna go for a swim," he said distractedly, and hurried outside.
Bruce called and then chased after him, but the boy didn't stop. Bruce watched in concern as Jason dove into the waves and didn't surface. And didn't surface. And still continued not to surface.
...click. 'Hopefully. Please, please, please, be what I think you are.' He still went and searched the water where he'd last seen Jason, but didn't find the boy. He went back inside and fretted until, at long last, Robin came wiggling wearily across the floor from the opposite side of the house.
"Hey, lad," Bruce murmured, scooping up the seal to cuddle. "There you are. Did you see Jay while you were out? Did you see Jaylad? Is he safe?" Robin leaned his head against Bruce's chest and huffed.
The anxiety didn't abate until late that night, when Bruce heard rummaging in the kitchen. He went downstairs, strode straight across the room without hesitating, and pulled Jason tightly into his arms.
"Let go, can't breathe," the boy complained, struggling.
Bruce loosened his grip slightly. "Don't just vanish into the ocean like that, I was worried about you."
"I c'n take care of myself. Let go."
Bruce held his shoulders and bent to look into his eyes. "I want you to be safe, Jason."
The boy was tense in his hands. "I'm fine. Let go or I'll bite ya!"
Bruce sighed and let go. "Get some sleep, Jay. I'm going to look for Robin, he's vanished again."
Jason pounded upstairs and Bruce waited a few minutes, then followed. When he reached his room, the seal was hunched in his nest, pretending to be asleep. Bruce kissed the soft fur on top of Robin's head and then went to sleep himself.
TBC
A/N: Thanks to breezy-cheezy for the...hoodie design thing! (It's probably not a spoiler to specify, but I'll hold off just in case there are some readers who haven't guessed yet. XD) Originally, I thought Jason just had to be wearing the hoodie, which was a little inconvenient, but she had the idea that what he really has to do is pull the hood over his head, and that idea worked a lot better. She animated it and posted it on her Tumblr, though beware of major spoilers for stuff that happens later in the fic!
