Gifts From the Sea, a Batman fanfic by Raberba girl

Batfam Bingo 2019: AU: Zoo

Chapter 48 - A Growing Family (rough draft 2)

Things were quiet for a week or two. Alfred started thoroughly organizing the Tower, and although some of the kids complained about the chores they were assigned, they all clearly loved the man.

"How come Dick and them are 'Master,' but the rest of us are just 'Mr. West' or 'Miss Roth' or whatever?" Wally wanted to know.

"I am employed by the Wayne family," Alfred explained as he dusted, "thus they are entitled to certain terms of address."

"Okay, so then why do you use nicknames? 'Master Dick' sounds kind of weird." The young speedster started lifting objects so that Alfred could more easily dust the flat surfaces underneath.

"I am in the unique position of the Family I serve also being like true family to me, and my grandchild prefers 'Dick' to 'Richard.' "

"What about me? I'm not your grandkid, but would you call me 'Wally' if I asked?"

"Certainly, young Wally."

"Is 'young' a title, too?" Wally wondered. "You call Roy that. Is it because you don't know his last name?"

"Indeed."

"I don't know his last name, either," Wally offered. "But I guess it's okay, since we've still got something to call him."

"Certainly. Thank you for your help, young Wally."

"You're welcome, Alfred!"

At one point, Bruce finally discovered exactly why Damian qualified as a sea person. While checking in on the pool, he found Dick and Damian darting through the water, the younger with a fish tail much like Dick's.

Bruce stared. "Damian...you're a mer...?"

"I am special," Damian announced. "I have the ability to wear oceanic robes." He peeled off his tail, which shifted halfway through to look like cloth instead of flesh. "Only people with the right genetics can transform. I am part of a very small, elite group."

Bruce slowly ran the robe through his hands, having trouble deciding how to feel about this. He looked at Dick.

"He has legs and tails," the mer pouted. "I want both, too! But they don't work for me."

"This is...impressive," Bruce finally said, because Damian was starting to look a little anxious. He handed the robe back. "You have more than one?"

"Yes. Would you like a demonstration?"

"Only if you want to. I didn't mean to interrupt your game."

"It wasn't a game, it was training!"

"He won't play games unless we call them 'training,' " Dick signed behind Damian's back.

o.o.o

Bruce became aware of a small body invading his blankets and pressing against him. The realization that the body was shivering pushed him from 5% awake to 15% awake. " 'S okay," he mumbled, putting an arm over the child and patting soothingly. " 'S okay..."

He wondered vaguely why the child was dry and didn't have that familiar sea-salt scent until a tiny voice whimpered his name and he remembered that not all of his children were mer. He couldn't remember names other than Dick's, and this wasn't Dick, but his sleepy brain conjured an impression of smooth dark fur and a precious, angry face. " 'S okay," he mumbled again to the son whose name he couldn't remember but whom he knew he loved very much. He meant to sit up and ask what was wrong, but instead, he fell back into full sleep.

o.o.o

When Bruce woke up for real, it was to find Jason nestled in his arms and Tim wrapped in a wet blanket and sitting on him, tentacles coiled around his limbs, fingers tapping at a tablet.

Bruce tried to get up but ended up not moving, all his efforts expressed in a wordless groan. The tentacle in his hair tightened uncomfortably and Tim leaned to peer into his face.

"Mornin'," Bruce mumbled. Jason scrunched tighter for a moment, then suddenly sat up, swaying and blinking. "Hi, Jay."

Color bloomed across Jason's face. "Sorry," the boy mumbled. He fought free of the blankets and fled before Bruce had even managed to sit up. Once Bruce was upright, he rubbed at his eyes and then looked at his remaining son, who hadn't shifted, meaning that Tim's upper body had come to rest on the blankets and his tentacles were still clutching Bruce's now-vertical body.

Man and octo-mer looked at each other. "What are you doing?" Bruce asked.

"You are everyone's day dad. You are my night room dad. But Jason came to night room." He painstakingly arranged his face into a frown. "I don't like it."

"Were you jealous, Tim?"

All eight tentacles briefly stilled. "No," his hand signed, at the same time a tentacle reached up to exclaim, "Jealous!"

"I love you, Tim. I always love you, whether there are other children here or not."

Tim looked away and pushed his hands into the blankets as if burying them, but his tentacles flailed, "Love me yes!"

Bruce leaned over to kiss Tim's forehead, then peeled away tentacles and forced himself to his feet so he could start getting ready for the day.

About an hour later, he tracked Jason to the beach where the little selkie was lying in seal form, gazing out at the waves. At his approach, Jason shifted to human form, his pelt a full-length robe to preserve his modesty instead of the normal hoodie. "What?" Jason asked sullenly, color creeping into his face.

"Are you doing all right?" Bruce asked, sitting down beside him.

"Yeah."

"I don't mind you coming to me at night, you know. Dick used to climb into my bed all the time before...everything."

"He have nightmares or something?" Jason asked suspiciously.

"Sometimes. He likes to cuddle regardless, though." Dick had rarely slept with him at the Tower, and Bruce wondered, not for the first time, about the Titans' sleeping arrangements. He still didn't know much about went on in the kids' private rooms. He'd awkwardly tried to give Dick The Talk and had made an even more feeble attempt with Kori (she, at least, seemed to have some prior knowledge), but he still didn't actually know anything about their intimacy level or even if they shared a room.

Jason sighed deeply and drew up his knees, wrapping his arms around them. "I dream about that Demon's Head place sometimes," he mumbled.

"Demon's Head?" Bruce repeated warily.

"Yeah. That's what they called that creepy old guy, 'the Demon's Head.' He was in charge. His daughter bought me from the traffickers, and they locked me up and...an' took my- my pelt." He tightened his grip on his legs, his body scrunched up as small as he could get.

"I'm sorry they did that to you, Jason," Bruce said softly.

"It felt so bad," Jason choked out. "It felt...like they'd - cut off a piece of me. Like, just took it. An'...an' I couldn't...!"

Bruce put an arm around his shoulders and drew him close, and Jason cried into his side for a while. The boy finally swallowed the last of his sobs and swiped his sleeve under his nose. Bruce gave him a handkerchief. Jason touched it briefly to his face but then just clutched it, still leaning heavily into Bruce's side.

"I'm so sorry I didn't look for you, Jason," Bruce whispered. "I hate myself for my own stupidity. I should never have believed her, I should have looked for you. I'm sorry."

"You wouldn'ta found me, anyway," Jason mumbled. "I was halfway 'cross the world. They had...like, ninja guards all over the place. I couldn't-" He broke off and pressed his face into Bruce for a while. Bruce kissed the top of his head and squeezed him tighter.

"I'm so glad I'm back," Jason whispered. "With...you." He cleared his throat and warily raised his head. "You call off the adoption, or...?"

"I will officially adopt you as soon as it's safe for me to show my face in public again," Bruce said firmly, "and in the meantime, I consider you to already be my son."

"Like, 100% all the way forever, or just-?"

"100% all the way forever," Bruce answered before Jason could finish the question.

The boy hid his face again and a hand crept out to grip Bruce's shirt.

"If you ever want or need to talk about what happened in that place, I'm willing to listen," Bruce said.

"Yeah," Jason whispered.

"Or if you don't feel ready yet, that's okay, too. I just don't want it to fester and eventually hurt you worse."

Jason exhaled deeply and relaxed a little. "I don't...wanna talk about it right now."

"All right."

"Just...um, this...I like this." Meaning the hugging, Bruce assumed.

"I like it, too," Bruce murmured.

Then they just sat quietly for a while and watched the waves.

o.o.o

Bruce didn't like when the Titans went out on patrol. He had no intention of stopping them, but it was always nerve-wracking scouring the news for mentions of them and worrying himself almost sick that they might get hurt.

Vic eventually took pity on him and showed him the communications room. It contained a supercomputer, a bank of screens, and a few chairs. Bruce paid close attention as Vic showed him the basic controls and programs, and the next time the kids went out on patrol, Bruce was able to keep an eye on them from afar.

Exciting as the Titans' work seemed in the news, in actuality, the majority of it was simply wandering around looking for crime to fight, handling minor incidents, or just hanging out. Bruce still kept at least a couple of screens attuned to the team's signatures and Vic's video feed, but he started exploring on his own, finding more and more interesting programs and functions.

"Tim," he said yet again as his concentration was broken by curious tentacles, "don't get the equipment wet. Here, let me show you something." He showed the child how to access security camera feeds and how to switch between them, then assigned him the meaningless task of picking out everyone who was wearing a yellow article of clothing.

That just meant that he was interrupted again every time Tim tugged at him and showed him a new spot of yellow on his screen.

"Very good, Tim, but here, let me show you how to take screencaps... You can collect them and show them to me all at once later."

Bruce procrastinated picking a therapist by starting to write a new book. The previous one had left off with Dick in Atlantis, and now he had so many more things to write about: Jason, Dick's return, and Tim. He didn't know if he'd ever publish this one or not, but the point was just to keep himself occupied. This worked for a while, until he had another depressive bout so bad that he found himself standing in the bathroom with shaving cream on half his face, staring at the blade of his razor for quite a while before Jason walked in on him and broke the spell.

He reluctantly scheduled a vidchat session with a therapist after that. [Bruce eventually finds a therapist who is helpful. They have sessions over the Internet because he's too paranoid to meet in person and they probably don't live in the same area, anyway.]

The Justice League and some of the Titans worked to track down the al Ghul family. When Roy reached out to some contacts to help, he ended up somewhat reconciling with his guardian. Bruce, who was still technically in hiding, had to convince the boy not to invite Oliver Queen back to the Tower, but Roy took Jason, Donna, and Garth along to meet the man for lunch in town, and he returned in fairly high spirits. He wasn't ready to move back in with Queen, but the old argument between them had apparently been blown out of proportion on both sides, and a few days later, Bruce overheard Roy chatting casually to Queen on the phone.

One night, after watching from the communications room as the kids defeated some sort of moth man, Bruce and Tim went to wait on the roof for their adoptive family to come home. The Titans eventually emerged from Raven's shadow portal in their usual high spirits, and Dick gave Bruce a hug as soon as he was in reach.

"Hey, little buddy," Vic greeted, picking up Tim and letting the octo-mer settle across his shoulders.

"How's the view up there?" Roy chuckled, flicking Tim lightly as he passed.

Bruce went to bed soon after that, trusting Vic to take care of Tim. He awakened late the next morning to find Tim wearing gloves and fiddling with some kind of simple electronics board. "What've you got there, kiddo?" he murmured, going to sit on the floor.

Tim looked at him, looked back at the board, stuck in some LED lights, and pressed a button. Three of the four LEDs lit up. The mer flicked his tentacles in a mildly displeased way and did some more fiddling until he had six lights and all of them were lit.

"Wow," Bruce murmured, genuinely impressed. "Did Vic teach you how to do that?"

"I like Vic."

"Well, good. That's good."

They went to get breakfast. Bruce was usually too late to arrive when Alfred was still serving, but so was most of the team, and Alfred always left plenty of food on the table for the Tower's residents to select from as they arrived. (He had to label portions for some of the teens so they wouldn't eat the entire thing before others got a chance to get their share.)

Bruce was wandering around, checking up on everyone, when Garth ran by with Raven flying after him like a kite and Wally zipping impatiently around them. The speedster stopped by Bruce, cheerfully announced "Yoink!" as he dug Tim out of Bruce's arms, and carried him off.

Bruce hesitated uncertainly, then drifted after them even though they were quickly out of sight. A few minutes later, Damian came running up a little breathlessly. "Wallace said you were unaccompanied. I'm here now so you won't be."

Bruce raised an eyebrow. "I don't need a babysitter, you know."

"You need company to keep your spirits up," Damian declared, and grabbed his arm. "I am informed that fathers in this culture teach their sons how to 'play catch.' I demand that you fulfill your parental obligation to me."

"All right. Would you prefer to use a baseball or a football?"

"A football is the one you are not allowed to touch with your feet, correct?"

Bruce grinned in affectionate amusement. "Yes."

"Baseball, then. I have no use for nonsense."

"All right. Let me finish checking on everyone first."

Jason, Roy, and Kori were crowded around what looked like a hologram, discussing something intently. Bruce left them alone. Dick was helping Alfred clean, Vic was working in the communications room, Gar was holed up in his bedroom, and Donna was flying with Goliath. "All right. Let's go see if we can find a baseball."

The rest of the day passed in a leisurely way, with the little groups of kids periodically breaking up and reforming in different combinations. By evening, Jason was helping Tim read a book, Alfred was teaching Wally and Roy how to knit as they waited for dinner to finish cooking, Raven was making a shadow portal obstacle course for Dick, and Garth had agreed to play video games with Vic. Bruce put a stop to Donna and Kori playfully tossing Damian back and forth to each other like a blade-wielding ball and managed to get them interested in a different activity, then went to check on Gar, whom he was a bit worried about. The boy hadn't been out of his room all day except for quick trips to the kitchen and bathroom.

"Garfield?" he called, knocking on the door, "Dinner will be ready soon. Are you all right in there?"

"Yeah, I'm fine!" Gar shouted back.

"Are you not feeling well?"

"No, I'm fine, really! How are you?"

"Er...I'm fine. Come on out soon, kiddo, I think we're about to set the table. Do you want to skip patrol tonight?"

"No, I'm good, I'll be right out!"

Gar seemed twitchy during dinner, his smiles a little panicked. Bruce quietly asked Raven if anything seemed off about the boy, but she shrugged and said she couldn't pick up on anything noteworthy. Gar seemed to have calmed down by the end of patrol and was fine the next day.

A few days later, Bruce was awakened a little after six in the morning by a phone call from Alfred.

"Master Bruce, I require your assistance in the kitchen at once."

"I'll...be right there, Alfred?" Bruce slurred in confusion, still half-asleep. He left the door open so Tim wouldn't be trapped if he woke up, then headed to the kitchen.

He found Alfred standing in the middle of the room, staring, gripping a broom like a weapon. Bruce stopped beside him and stared, too.

A rather grotesque pink creature was on the island, consuming a cluster of grapes out of the fruit bowl. It looked like an enormous larva. As Bruce watched, it paused and made a sound like a burp, then leaned back down to chomp on a banana.

"How did it get up there?" Bruce wondered, since he was kind of drawing a blank on all other reactions.

"It is clearly not a natural creature," Alfred said, looking disgusted as he glared at the larva on his pristine countertop. "I'm quite tempted to exterminate it, but with all the unusual residents we have here, perhaps we ought to consult them first."

"I'll wake the kids," Bruce said.

Most of them were asleep in their rooms. He got them all assembled in the hallway, sleepy and grumpy, then knocked on Gar's door a second time. "Garfield, now, please."

"Uhhh, just a minute!" the boy called frantically. There was a crash.

"Gar!" Bruce pushed open the door. The boy stared at him like a deer in headlights, his room in disarray. "Whatever you're looking for can wait. I just need you to take a look at something and tell me if you know anything about it."

Gar trailed unhappily behind the group, but as soon as they reached the kitchen, he gasped and cried out, "Silkie!" He ran to snatch up the larva and stood there clutching it to his chest like a baby, staring at them all with wide eyes.

"Ohh!" Kori gasped, her eyes lighting up. "It is so sweet!" She crossed the kitchen in a single soaring hop and cooed as she petted the creature. It gurgled happily in response and wiggled its many stubby legs.

"I guess that answers that question," Bruce muttered. He looked at the rest of the team. "Are any more of you involved, or just Gar?"

There were various murmurs and gestures that indicated none of them had seen the larva in their lives.

"All right, then. You can go back to bed if you want." Bruce turned back to Gar, and the other kids dispersed except for Damian, who went to the refrigerator, and Garth, who moved closer to peer at the larva in fascination.

"Garfield," Bruce said. Gar stared at him apprehensively. "Explain."

Gar sucked in a breath. "I just-! They were so cute, and they're only babies, I was just gonna-!"

"Where did it come from? What even is it?"

"It's, um...you remember when we fought Killer Moth...?"

Despite the lectures Bruce and Alfred both gave him, Gar kept forgetting to care for his new pet as the novelty wore off and he started getting interested in different things. Silkie was frequently found around the Tower unsupervised, usually eating something. It was Kori who began to pick up the slack, playing with the creature whenever she came across it and sometimes even letting it sleep in her room.

"All right, that's enough," Bruce finally declared. "Garfield, you clearly can't keep up with this particular responsibility. We're donating the larva to a research lab."

"What?! No!" Gar gasped. "I'll do better!" he promised for the twentieth time.

"Gar, you haven't been doing better. Silkie is very destructive if left unsupervised, and you've broken your promises and neglected him too many times. That isn't good for him, either."

"But...but he'll get hurt in a lab...!"

Kori happened to come in at that moment, talking to Dick as he rode on her back. She saw Gar's distressed expression as he held Silkie and Bruce's stern look. She halted in alarm. "Is something wrong?"

"They're gonna get rid of Silkie!" Gar cried, and Kori gasped.

"You desire to kill Syl'Khee?! You must not! He is a precious baby!"

"I never said we're going to kill him," Bruce said in exasperation. "We'll find a lab that's interested in his behavior rather than just his biology."

In the end, Silkie did not get sent to a research lab. Kori took over care of the larva and did a much more responsible job of it, to the point where Dick started feeling neglected. "She wants to bring Silkie on our date," he complained to Bruce.

"What do you expect me to do about it?"

"Tell her no!"

"I really don't know if I should be getting involved in your relationship like that..."

TBC