Gifts From the Sea, a Batman fanfic by Raberba girl
Batfam Bingo 2019: AU: Zoo
Chapter 27 - Lifeline (rough draft 2)
Bruce woke up late in the morning feeling slow and tired, even after a long night's sleep. He lay in bed for nearly an hour, then dragged himself to the kitchen for coffee. He sipped at it, abandoned the rest, then trudged outside to watch the waves, the stupid ocean that had given him both the greatest joys and the greatest pain of his life. The sea was the true mother of his sons, and she was a jealous parent, wanting them all to herself. 'Screw you,' he thought dully as he looked out at the horizon.
He sighed and descended the porch steps, his head hanging, then came to a stop at the bottom, finally realizing that the sand was...moving. Bits of it kept twitching and curling a little like it was alive.
Bruce frowned and crouched down to get a better look. There were...tendrils, thick ones, camouflaged against the sand. His eyes traveled along to where the strips of rubbery flesh all came together and then transitioned into pale, flaking skin. A torso with two human arms. And farthest away, two dull eyes, watching him in fear and resignation from the shadows under the porch steps.
"Oh my...God." Bruce, suddenly shaking and on high alert, fumbled in mer-sign, "Safe, quiet, safe." He scrambled around to the other side and reached gingerly under the strange mer's armpits, drawing them out into the open as gently as possible.
The little mer started to breathe rapidly, gills frantically working, tentacles twitching and curling more urgently.
The child's skin was as dry as a human's, and littered with abrasions.
"Oh my God...! Okay- Okay, kiddo, it's okay, I'm going to pick you up now. I won't hurt you." Bruce, with difficulty because the octopus-mer's center of gravity was so weird, hefted the child into his arms. The little creature started shivering, a dry tentacle curling around Bruce's leg. "Okay, kid, okay, we're going, let's get you into some water, kiddo, let's get you some water..."
Bruce rushed to the back of the house and set the little octo-mer into the pool, which was already filled with saltwater because it had basically been Dick's bed. The child sank and lay at the bottom, tentacles drifting.
Bruce, despite having raised two children who could breathe underwater, nevertheless felt panicked and submerged himself, laying a hand on the mer's chest until he was sure it was rising and falling in a steady rhythm. Then he surfaced, retrieved his phone, and called the king of Atlantis.
"ARTHUR. I FOUND AN OCTOPUS CHILD DYING UNDER MY PORCH STEPS; WHAT DO I DO."
Less than ten minutes later, Arthur and Mera were rushing up the beach. They jumped into the pool without pausing to speak to Bruce, and he could see them descending to where the strange mer lay.
The child, who had been still until now, finally moved. Bruce could see their shape under the water, moving away from the Atlanteans. As Bruce was frowning, trying to figure out what that meant, a trembling tentacle tip rose up, felt around, and latched onto Bruce's leg. The rest of the creature slowly followed until the little mer was shaking in Bruce's lap, five tentacles clinging to him tightly enough to bruise, the three remaining tentacles sweeping continuously through the water like sentries. One trembling hand clutched Bruce's shirt; the other felt across the deck, shying away from the unfamiliar surface.
The Atlanteans had surfaced and were staring. "They're almost legend even for us," Mera said faintly. "We thought they'd gone extinct."
"We're not gonna hurt you, kiddo," Arthur crooned.
Apparently unconvinced, the child started trying to find a way into Bruce's shirt. They had not made eye contact with any of the adults at any point.
"Why do they trust me?" Bruce wondered in bewilderment, unbuttoning his shirt to give the child easier access and then re-buttoning it over the mer's small body. The child, now thinking themself safe and hidden, had finally gone still again except for the three slowly sweeping tentacles. "I'm a human."
"Hell if I know," Arthur sighed. "What happened, Bruce?"
"I don't know! I was just coming outside and found them. Under my porch, extremely dehydrated." Now reminded, Bruce, awkward because of his load, slipped into the pool so the mer would be submerged again. "Did they crawl up from the sea? I didn't have a chance to check for a trail."
"He's male, by the way," Mera said. Judging by Arthur's expression, he hadn't been able to tell any more than Bruce had.
Investigation revealed that the merboy did, indeed, seem to have emerged from the ocean, headed straight for the house, and explored a bit before retreating under the steps.
"This is not normal," Mera stated. Two little eyes, gazing out from Bruce's collar, abruptly retreated deeper into the shirt as she stared. "This is unheard of. Octo-mer hide even from us, they never go anywhere near the surface. Yet it's almost like he..."
"Sought me out?" Bruce suggested quietly. He was wet and cold from standing in the unheated pool for so long and sheltering the creature right against his body, but Bruce's concern and fascination dulled the discomfort.
"I wonder if he's been watching you," Arthur remarked, peering into the collar. Bruce winced as the mer forced his way around to the back of the shirt to escape scrutiny. "If he's seen firsthand how you treated Dick and-"
"I know," Bruce snapped, not wanting to hear his murdered son's name spoken so casually. "He might have...known to expect good care." Though the merboy must have been absent these past few weeks, to have missed the wreck Bruce was in the wake of what had happened to Jason. "Do octo-mer need parents? I don't think actual octopuses do."
"I am under the impression that adults do not stay long to raise their young," Mera said, "but we know almost nothing about them that has been scientifically proven."
The Atlanteans soon left to consult some experts, sensing that they weren't helping much even though Bruce was glad to have had someone around to take the edge off his panic. Once he and his new charge were alone again, the boy cautiously ventured out of the shirt. He stuck close to Bruce's feet for a while, clinging as he looked around the pool for threats.
Finally convinced there were none, the little mer climbed up Bruce's body and cautiously emerged from the water. They stared at each other for a while, then the child reached up to rest a single fingertip on Bruce's face.
"My name is Bruce," Bruce said softly.
The mer hissed air between his teeth that sounded like a voiceless approximation: "Hhoo."
"Bruce."
"...P'sss," he tried again.
"Can you speak?" Bruce murmured. Of course the mer couldn't answer, and he wasn't about to stick a mirror down the kid's throat to check for vocal cords, so he almost immediately lost interest in the question. In fact, now that the adrenaline was dying down, he was kind of losing interest in everything. "...Well. Let's get you back home, kiddo."
Carrying the little octo-mer was rather awkward. The kid didn't have much of either a butt or solid body mass beneath the waist, so Bruce basically had to wrap his arms around the kid's chest like a child with a cat. The mer's tentacles immediately latched onto him, making it hard to walk, too. "For God's sake..." Bruce went through the long, painstaking process of peeling the kid off him and back into the pool, then went to look for a wagon. When he came back, he found that the mer had left the pool and was now studying the glass of the back door in fascination, tapping a fingernail against one of the panes and squelching tentacle suckers across it.
"All right, kid, come on." He picked up the awkward bundle of damp, rubbery octo-mer and gently dumped him in the wagon. "All right, let's go." He'd only taken a few steps when the wagon suddenly lurched to a stop. There were thumping sounds and the sensation of rapid weight distribution. Bruce looked back and was aghast to find a tentacle wedged between one of the wheels and the underside of the wagon, the little mer writhing and thrashing in silent agony.
"Oh my G-!" Bruce quickly freed the tentacle and the mer whipped it close, clutching the injury with both hands and curling over it. The remaining tentacles were either waving or clutching onto the wagon and Bruce's arm in distress. "You need to keep your limbs clear of the wheels, do you understand? Otherwise, they'll get caught."
A few steps later, it happened again. The child, clutching two tentacles now, peered up at Bruce miserably.
Bruce gritted his teeth, then yanked off his shirt and, with some difficulty, gathered up the tentacles. He used his shirt to tie them all together, then straightened up. The mer stared at his bound limbs, the ends wriggling madly, then up at Bruce. His expression was mostly unchanged, but his teeth were obviously gritted, and then he hissed. One hand was working along the edge of the wagon, the other picking at the shirt.
"I'll take it off when we get to the water," Bruce snapped.
Shortly afterward, the wagon jerked to a stop again. Bruce closed his eyes for a second, then looked back. The mer was staring at his own hand, which was now scratched. His tentacles, though still bound, were writhing hard, and the shirt was already coming loose.
"All right. Look." Bruce grabbed a piece of driftwood, poked it demonstratively at the wheel, then tossed it in the wagon. The mer, whose entire body had, disconcertingly, gone the same bright red color as the wagon, cautiously touched it. "If you have to go poking at dangerous things, use something other than your own body parts."
When he set off again, he soon felt renewed obstructions, but when he glanced back, he found that this time the mer was indeed using the piece of driftwood to explore the wagon. Whenever it got yanked out of his hands, he'd scoop it up with a tentacle and go back to poking. The shirt lay limply under the boy's freed limbs.
At the water's edge, Bruce sighed once more, then reached to pick up the child, who tightly latched onto him. He waded out about waist-deep and worked on detaching the mer again, but every time he freed himself from one or two limbs, others would take their place.
"Kid, I need you to go home. Go away." He signed it in Dick's language and also made expressive gestures, but the boy's face remained blank. He tried just walking back to the house, but the boy wouldn't let go, and he couldn't in good conscience keep letting a child who looked about seven or eight years old literally drag across the sand after him. He stopped and breathed deeply for a while, trying to rein in his temper.
He got distracted because the kid was climbing up him again, looking ridiculous doing it in open air rather than water. It took several minutes for Bruce to even grasp the boy and work him into a position where he could hold him fairly comfortably. The boy stared back at him, hands resting on his shoulders, two tentacles wrapped tightly around his legs and two more around his arms and another exploring his hair and the rest fiddling with beach debris.
"I don't want you. You need to go home," Bruce said, slowly and clearly.
The boy started signing in an elaborate language Bruce didn't recognize, some of his tentacles gesturing as purposefully as hands. All Bruce got out of it was his name, "P'sss," exhaled a few times amidst the child's other voiceless whispers. The boy was squinting in the morning sunlight.
Bruce sighed deeply and decided to wait until the creature was asleep before attempting to get rid of him again. He carried the octo-mer back to the house, dragging the empty wagon after him, and only once they were inside did the mer finally release him, slithering to the floor and looking around in wonder.
"Here." Bruce fetched some of Dick's old toys, feeling a pang at the reminder of one of his lost sons, and offered them to the octo-mer. The boy took them and examined them.
Bruce brought in a kiddie pool and filled it with saltwater, then gestured. "If you get too dry or you get tired, you can climb in here and rest. I've used up my energy quota for today, so I'm going to sleep, probably for hours, because I lost my reasons for living and I can't deal with you right now." He paused, then went around to cover up all the electrical outlets and block off the stairs and shut all the doors except the ones that led out to the pool and the beach. With any luck, the kid would get bored and be gone by the time Bruce woke up again.
"Okay." In the living room again, Bruce put his hands on his hips. The child, still fiddling with the toys, stared up at him. "Okay," Bruce said again. "Good night. Good morning. It's all the same to me these days." He lay down on the couch and fell asleep.
o.o.o
Hours later, Bruce gradually blinked awake, stared at the ceiling for a while, then frowned in confusion when he heard clinking sounds. Suddenly remembering the little octo-mer, he sat up.
The room looked like it had been hit by a tornado. Most of the books in the lower shelves had been pulled out and spread across the floor, as had a pile of newspapers and magazines; torn loose pages were strewn about. Baskets had been upended, their contents scattered; the couch pillows and throw blankets were all over the place; cabinets were open and empty because none of their contents were inside them anymore; there was water and cooking oil EVERYWHERE.
In the middle of it all, the ten-limbed child lay on his stomach, staring intently at a video playing on an old tablet. His hands were still, but two of his tentacles were working curiously at a Rubik's Cube; another was flipping through a set of measuring spoons; two more were tugging gently at Dick's cherished toy elephant; one was squirming in a bottle of olive oil; and the last two were playing through a tangle of electrical cords that, thankfully, were not plugged into anything.
Bruce made a strangled noise and the mer casually looked up. Then he must have interpreted Bruce's gobsmacked expression as angry, because the child's eyes widened. Swiftly, he backed away and undulated under a pile of debris, drawing more objects over himself until he was completely buried. His tentacles withdrew out of sight, and the pile concealing him went completely still.
It was...really freaking cute. The minute the thought came to mind, Bruce felt a stab of grief because there were two other children who would never again make him smile with their adorable antics. He had to press his hands over his face to stop himself from crying, except it didn't work, so now he really was crying.
After a long time, when he'd stopped sobbing and was now just sitting there with tears leaking slowly down his cheeks, he felt a touch on his knee that startled him.
The octo-mer's little face was peering up at him. The measuring spoons were still clutched in a tentacle and another tentacle was playing with a remote control to an outdated machine, but most of the mer's attention was on Bruce. One of the free tentacles slid across his shoulders; a hesitant finger reached to poke gently at the tear tracks. The mer stared at his finger for a moment, then poked at Bruce's face again.
"I'm crying because I'm sad. I'm sad because I lost my sons."
The mer signed something.
"I don't know your language." Bruce sighed heavily. "This is mine, though." He said in ASL, "I am very sad."
The mer stared, eyes widening and tentacles going completely still for a moment. Then he resumed his usual slow but constant motion and attempted to copy the ASL.
"I am very sad," Bruce repeated, both verbally and with his hands.
"I am very sad," the mer imitated.
Bruce rested his face in his hand. "Why am I teaching you this? I can't teach you this. You don't need to know it, because you're going home soon."
He tried ignoring the mer for a while, which eventually worked. The boy slithered away and picked up more random objects with his tentacles. The limb with the measuring spoons lowered in front of his face, and intent eyes watched as the suckers adeptly maneuvered the spoons around and around the ring that held them together.
Bruce eventually found the strength to get to his feet and start cleaning up. He worked slowly, and there was something slightly soothing about the mindless work. It was at least an hour later when he discovered that the mer had fallen asleep in the kiddie pool, having pulled a blanket over the top. It couldn't have been for warmth, because the mer wasn't snuggled into it; it was simply draped over the pool like a shield, the rounded lump in the middle rising and falling with each breath.
After far too long, Bruce finally remembered how the mer had squinted in the bright light outside. He thought of deep, dark waters where octo-mer apparently liked to hide. Slowly, he reached for the blinds of the window he'd stupidly parked the pool right in front of, and he closed them.
Nothing changed, of course, since the mer was asleep, but the dimness made Bruce feel a bit better, in any case. He resumed cleaning.
Half an hour later, he suddenly remembered that this was his chance. Tense now, Bruce cautiously put his arms around the mer, blanket and all, and lifted him up. Water came cascading down, only about half of it landing in the pool, but Bruce didn't care. He laid the wet bundle in the wagon and pulled it outside.
Once he'd reached the edge of the sea, he looked and found that the mer was awake, sitting up but with the blanket still draped over him like the world's lamest ghost costume. When Bruce removed the makeshift sunshield, the mer flinched and covered his eyes with his hand. Bruce picked up the boy and carried him into the ocean.
The water came nearly up to his chest when he finally stopped. Two tentacles came to settle securely around him.
"No," Bruce said in exasperation, "you're supposed to swim away. Just let go and go home, it's not difficult."
The mer brought up his other hand and cupped them around his eyes, squinting at Bruce's face from the little shaded shelter.
Bruce was prying away tentacles again. "Go home," he ordered.
A small fingertip reached up and rested on his furrowed brow.
"Stop being so fucking cute when I'm trying to be sad! Get off me!"
It soon became apparent that there was no way he and his measly two arms were going to prevail against someone who had ten, two with thumbs and eight with suckers. Furious, Bruce stormed back to shore and then halted, closing his eyes in utter exasperation when he tried to stride across the sand and felt the heaviness of an eight-year-old child dragging in his wake. He looked down at all the tentacles wrapped tightly around his legs, then at the kid, who was simply sprawled behind him looking way too unperturbed at his undignified position.
"This is not normal behavior, you know," Bruce informed him. "For either of us."
"I am very sad?"
"Oh for-" Bruce stooped down and started peeling tentacles off his legs as quickly as he dared to without hurting the child. It worked just as effectively as it had the last several times he'd tried it, and his frustration reached its peak. "GET THE HELL OFF ME! YOU DON'T HAVE TO SPEAK ENGLISH TO TELL THAT I DON'T WANT YOU, GO BACK TO THE FUCKING OCEAN WHERE YOU BELONG AND LEAVE ME THE HELL ALONE!"
He shoved down the guilt because his tirade had worked. The little mer was curled up surprisingly small, tentacles tightly balled up and both arms covering his head, perfectly still, his whole body the same color as the sand.
"There," Bruce muttered in a hollow voice. He stumbled away. "Don't follow me. Go home."
He eventually made his way back to the house, where he curled up in a corner and cried for a while, wanting to die. Then he stretched out his legs and sat there, staring dully at the wreck that was his home. He ought to finish cleaning it up. There was no point in cleaning it up.
He was half-seriously contemplating sleeping pills and alcohol when he shuffled past a window on his way to bed and paused. There was a lump out there, on the beach, about where he'd left the mer. He couldn't tell from this distance whether the mer was still lying there or if it was a bit of debris in about the same location.
Uneasily, Bruce started tidying. He kept pausing so often to look out the window that he started setting a timer, only allowing himself to look every ten minutes.
Most of the living room was picked up when he took his allotted glance out the window and was startled to see an unusual number of seagulls gathering around the lump on the beach. One of them started picking at it.
Bruce ran out the door and down the sand, scattering birds as he came to a halt beside the lump. It was...the mer. Still there. Looking dead.
Horror and panic surged up in Bruce; he fell to his knees and pressed his fingers against the boy's neck, deciding distractedly that if the child was dead, he himself would soon be following.
He felt a pulse. At his touch, the boy stirred and flinched, digging fingers into the sand, starting to pull away.
"Oh God..." Dehydrated again, probably traumatized because Bruce was a fucking monster, but alive. Bruce scooped up the mer and rushed to the pool with him, kneeling down to release him into the water. The mer drifted for one second, then shot to the farthest end of the pool and huddled as deep as he could get.
Bruce rubbed at his face, cursing himself. Then he went to get some fish.
He dropped one in and watched hopefully, but there was no reaction. Feeling sick with shame and anxiety, he dropped in another, trying to get it closer to the tiny dark lump at the bottom of the pool. After several long minutes, there was some movement, but he couldn't tell from this distance if the mer had actually taken the fish or not.
He didn't dare enter the pool himself, so he dropped another fish in, feeling helpless, trying to aim between the mer and where the first fish had come to rest. He was deeply grateful when the mer moved again toward the third fish, leaving the water behind him empty - hopefully that meant he'd eaten the second one.
Once the fish were gone, Bruce dropped in some weighted pool toys, then retreated into the house. He didn't...feel like doing anything, so he dragged a chair close to the back door and just watched, waiting to see if the little mer would venture out, until he fell asleep.
o.o.o
When he woke up, he was startled to find the mer pressed up against the glass of the back door, staring at him. He got up immediately to open it and the mer retreated.
"Hey," Bruce said gently, kneeling down. "I'm sorry. I was wrong. I'm not going to hurt you."
After a long moment, the mer, who'd gone the same color as the deck he was resting on, held out a trembling hand. In his fist was gripped one of the dead fish.
"Oh - no, kiddo, that's for you. I have my own food in the house. That's for you." Bruce reached to push the fish back toward him, but the mer flinched away. Feeling guilty and ashamed again, Bruce mimed eating. "That fish is for you to eat."
The mer briefly bared his teeth, the ends of his tentacles curling tightly for a moment. Then he held out the fish again and used both hands to pry it apart, exposing its insides. He narrowed his eyes at Bruce, then transferred the fish to a tentacle so he could set both hands on his own chest. He dug his fingernails into his flesh, right over his heart, and made the same motion as if to tear open his own chest. Of course he didn't do it in actuality, but he was still pressing hard enough to leave scratches in the wake of his nails.
"Don't do that," Bruce sharply, reaching again. The mer started to flinch back but then froze and lowered himself to press against the ground, shoulders hunched, staring up at Bruce. "Let me...get..."
Bruce went inside and came back out with the medicine he'd used to use for Dick's cuts and scrapes. The mer, upright now, watched as Bruce spread it over the scratches. "Don't hurt yourself like this."
After a long moment, the mer, not looking directly at him, touched a fingertip to Bruce's forehead and pressed hard. Bruce winced at the sharp pressure, but didn't pull away. He deserved a lot worse. "I'm not angry anymore. I was wrong."
After a moment, the mer's eyes slid to him. Then he formed a hook shape with his forefinger and stuck it in his own mouth, tipping back his head. He narrowed his eyes at Bruce.
"Oh God, I- No one's going to- fish you- Is that what you're asking?" Neither of Bruce's children had ever seemed bothered by the practice of fishing. He'd never given any thought to what it must be like from the fish's perspective. He didn't see any scarring on the octo-mer's face, but just watching someone else get caught on a hook would be traumatizing in and of itself. "No one's going to hurt you. I acted like I was to try to drive you away, but obviously that didn't work, and I'll die before I let anyone hurt you." Bruce ran a hand through his hair. "You have no idea what I'm saying, do you."
He sighed and thought a moment. He considered acting it out, but if he was going to be gesturing, anyway, he might as well teach the child how to sign properly and eventually be able to tell him directly. "I am sorry. I'm an idiot. You are a good person."
The mer simply stared at him, making no response. Bruce got up, went into the house, grabbed the measuring spoons, and brought them back.
The mer stared at the offered spoons, then narrowed his eyes and took them. He glared up at Bruce as his grasping tentacle spun the spoons around and around their ring.
"I know you're angry and I know this doesn't- I'm not trying to bribe you. I..." Bruce sighed and sat down again, pulling out his phone to place an order for a bunch of stim toys and fidgets. The mer crawled into the house, pointedly circling around him, and set about methodically wrecking the living room again. Feeling fond and guilty, Bruce crouched down a safe distance away and started saying and signing the words for each item the mer reached for. "Magazine. That's a magazine."
The mer eyed him, then grasped a page and slowly ripped it.
"You are tearing a page of the magazine," Bruce explained.
The mer stared at him. Then he handed off the torn page to a tentacle, moved a little farther along, and reached for the electrical cords he'd had earlier, watching Bruce.
"Those are electrical cords."
After a long moment, the mer pointed at him. "P'sss."
"I am Bruce," Bruce said, signing the letter 'B.' "B. Bruce. That's me."
The mer made an exaggerated angry face before subsiding into his usual flat expression.
"Angry. I was angry, but now I'm not. I'm sad. I think you are angry. That's okay."
"Angry."
"Yes. I'm sorry."
"B. Angry. Sad. Me." The mer glanced at him. "Me?" Then he said in his voiceless whisper, "Tti'ckie. Sshay."
Bruce was...floored. "T- Dickie? Jay?"
"Tti'ckie." He briefly brought all his tentacles together in a bundle and undulated like Dick in the water. "Sshay." He mimed pulling something over his head.
"You...you really have been...watching us." Bruce felt numb. He didn't know how to react to this.
"Me?"
Bruce ran a shaky hand over his mouth. "You want a name?"
The mer made a sign in his own language and then looked at Bruce expectantly.
"Um..." Bruce's head was suddenly entirely devoid of names. He grasped for some desperately, but the only ones that came to mind were 'Alfred,' 'Thomas,' and 'Martha.' He wrenched his thoughts aside, away from family to anything else, movies, maybe, and the first thing he thought of was Timothy Spalding, the guest star of a recent Gray Ghost episode he'd watched. "Timothy?" Too complicated; shorten it. "Tim? Do you like that?"
The mer cocked his head.
"Tim," Bruce said, pointing at him. "I am B. Bruce. You are Tim?"
"Me. Tt'mm." The mer eyed him.
"Yes. If you want it."
The mer turned away to look at his measuring spoons again.
"I think I have another set somewhere, let me get it..."
TBC
A/N: Tim was originally going to be a regular merboy like Dick (so was Jason), but then Breezy did some sketches for this AU and she made each Batkid a different species of mer, and Tim was an octopus which I thought was absolutely perfect, so I changed my version to match. :)
The plural of "octopus" is actually "octopuses," not "octopi."
I couldn't figure out how to convey this while writing in Bruce's perspective, but Bruce yelling at him actually triggered a bout in Tim himself. Tim thinks he's hated and a failure and is also kind of scared he might get killed (while at the same time wanting to die because he's so "useless" that he couldn't even do the one job he'd assigned himself). Obviously that doesn't happen, so then he finally gets tired of waiting to die and climbs out of the pool to track down Bruce, and the tearing-open-my-chest and the fish hook gestures translate to "(angry) Why don't you just gut me already and get it over with? No? Oh, NOW you want to be all nice and gentle? You humans think you can do whatever you want to we sea people, we're just mindless fish to you to be painfully captured." Something along those lines, anyway. Then Bruce offers the olive branch and Tim accepts, but grudgingly.
