Gifts From the Sea, a Batman fanfic by Raberba girl

Batfam Bingo 2019: AU: Zoo

Chapter 56 - In the Eyes of the Law (part 2) [rough draft 2]

Bruce got Damian and Athanasia documented as his biological children and adopted his other sons as soon as he was able to. It meant spending longer in Gotham than any of them liked, but they all wanted to get it done, and it was a wonderful opportunity for Bruce's children to openly spend time with their grandparents.

"All right, I think that's about enough for me; have pity on an old woman!" Martha laughed. She climbed out and sat on the edge of the pool with her legs dangling in the water, smiling at Thomas in thanks when he set a towel around her shoulders. Then she made a playful face at Tim, who'd drifted after her and was now clinging to her legs with his tentacles, staring up at her accusingly. "No pity for Grandma, is that it?"

"Play more."

"Hmmm, only if you come up here to do it!" Martha gathered the mer into her arms and carried him over to a table, where they were both soon engrossed in a game of checkers.

Thomas, meanwhile, had gone to pick up Athanasia, the reverent look on his face indicating that he didn't take such an honor for granted. Asia had taken a whole week to warm up to her grandparents enough to let them hold her. "How you doin', baby girl?"

"No," she said automatically, and went back to squeezing the mesh grape ball someone had given her. Thomas kissed the side of her head and bounced her gently. Still looking at the grape ball, she tipped to the side to lean against his chest.

It was a peaceful and pleasantly warm night. The mysteriously constant cloud cover over the city itself didn't reach as far as the manor tonight; only a few lazily outstretched fingers of clouds marred the mostly clear sky. Fireflies danced in the gardens and distant woods. The pool area was cozily lit up, the house itself dark. Most of the servants had retired for the night, though a couple came out to clean up the remnants of dinner.

Alfred, who'd been persuaded to take the night off, had finally stopped taking photos and videos (though his phone remained close at hand) and was now reading a book, one hand slowly stroking Goliath's snout. The dragon-bat was sprawled beside the butler's chair, dwarfing it, eyes closed as he rumbled in contentment. Ace was adorably curled up against Goliath.

Ravi remained vigilant as always, but he had at least been persuaded to sit and eat as he kept an eye on his two charges.

Dick, Jason, and Damian were still waging war in the pool, a bit more violent now that their grandmother was safely out of range. "Damian," Bruce called sharply when Jason cried out in pain, "be careful. Don't hurt your brothers."

"He attacked me first!" the child protested.

"With a pool noodle."

"I detected his pathetic attempt at a sneak attack! Did you expect me to just ignore-?!" The boy's sentence ended in a high-pitched shriek of surprise as Dick seized him in his arms during a powerful breach and then plunged into the deepest depths of the pool with him. Jason cackled and yanked his hood over his head before following.

"Does Damian have a robe on?" Martha asked worriedly.

"Dick won't let him drown either way," Bruce assured her. When the boys finally resurfaced, Damian pouting and the older two laughing, Bruce slung off his shirt and stood up. Tim, seeing that he was headed for the pool, abandoned the checkers board and thumped to the ground, crawling across the deck that had been specially designed for him and Dick to do so without scraping their sensitive flesh.

"Ooohh, Dad's coming!"

"Oooohh!"

"Father, reprimand them!"

Bruce, smiling at his boys and glowing at being addressed as their dad, dove into the water and joined in their game.

Twenty minutes later, he gave up and went to sprawl on the tanning ledge, trying to catch his breath. Dick hauled himself onto the ledge and flopped through the shallow water until he reached his father, collapsing against him. The mer allowed Damian to shoulder him out of the way, then resettled against the smaller boy. Jason curled up on Bruce's other side and Tim claimed Bruce's chest to lean against. Once the octo-mer was situated, even his tentacles calmed, only their tips moving to curl around his siblings' limbs.

The whole pile of bodies went still, their breathing the only movement. Bruce rested with all four of his sons in his arms and his parents looking on fondly. He was so, so happy to be alive.

o.o.o

Since there was a lot of waiting for paperwork to get processed, Bruce got his boys set up with tutors and then, soon after his arrival in Gotham, hired someone to help him turn The Boy in the Fish Tank and its unpublished sequel into professional works. He and his co-writer ended up drafting new material about recent developments and combining the entire story into a memoir called Gifts From the Sea.

Martha had suggested the title. "Because isn't that what your children are?"

Bruce looked out the window, down at the kids splashing around outside. He had claimed a study on this side of the house specifically because of the good view it had of the outside pool, and it was early enough in the day that the sun hadn't driven the kids to the indoor pool yet. Now that they no longer had to hide from the servants, they, particularly Dick and Tim, spent the majority of their time in the water. "Yes," Bruce murmured. "Gifts from the sea...they are certainly that."

"There you are, then. That's your book."

Bruce's family took a brief trip to the beach to do a photo shoot for the book cover. Going through the pictures afterward, Bruce took special note of one that ended up being the final pick: Dick smiling as he watched his brothers, glimmering in the sun and looking as beautiful as a Disney princess; Tim solemnly destroying a sandcastle as he clutched fidgets in his tentacles; Jason bracing a bare foot as he reached over, the webbing between his toes subtle but unmistakable.

The back cover incorporated a picture of Damian as a mer - the photo had been snatched when the boy was sulking, lying in reach of the waves with his back toward the viewer. The shot had captured him just as he'd been pushing up with his arms and glancing toward the sunset. The whole thing had a beautifully melancholy vibe that clashed hilariously with what Bruce remembered of the actual day, which was him yelling in exasperation for his youngest son to get back here and stop wasting the crew's time; the sooner they finished up, the sooner they could go back to the hotel and eat.

o.o.o

Months in the future, after the publication date, Bruce would get a letter from Amanda, his old coworker at ABAZ who had befriended Dick in his childhood. She had initially supported Dick when he'd gone public as a person and a Teen Titan, then been pressured by the zoo into reversing course. Her sellout had somewhat soured Bruce's impression of her, though he did sympathize a bit. He remembered how agonizing it had been to love Dick and want to do what was best for him, while simultaneously being hindered and threatened by those who held so much power over both him and Dick.

Dear Bruce,

I know it's been a while, I don't know if you remember me. This is Amanda Jones from Amnesty Bay Aquatic Zoo. I've been following Dick in the news for years, and I wanted to write to you now that it's safe.

I have such fond memories of Dick, and I miss him very much. I'd like to see him if that's possible. He was such a sweet little calf, so adorable. He's so big now! And I still can't believe how well he talks. He's just incredible, he really changed my life.

I read your book, Gifts From the Sea. It was lovely. I'm so amazed that you have a little octopus calf now, too. I copied some of the photos from the book and keep them on my desk. I would really love to meet Tim as well, he looks like such a sweetheart.

Anyway, I also wanted to say thank you for understanding what happened back then, after Dick's first interview. I've always been on your side, I didn't want to record that video, but I'm sure you remember what Ryan and Judy are like. Honestly, they still terrify me, I was so afraid I was about to lose my job. I tried to sound insincere when I said those things in the video, and I'm so glad you picked up on that. Dick has proved many times over how smart he is, and now the law's been passed, so I don't have to pretend anymore. It's such an incredible relief.

Things are so different at ABAZ since you were here. It's wonderful in some ways, I still love my job, but it's a shame we don't have any mer these days. Now that the law's been passed, they could work for us and get paid for the shows and displays they do, you know? Maybe Dick would be interested, he was always so good for the guests. People still send us letters for him even though he hasn't been here in so long. There are so many people who would really love to see him again.

Well, I won't take up anymore of your time, I just wanted to get back in touch. You can call me anytime, or write, whichever's more convenient for you. Give Dick a hug for me.

Amanda

She included her contact information. Bruce re-read the letter and then sat for a while, contemplating it. He eventually took it to Dick.

"This is a letter from Amanda Jones from ABAZ. Do you remember her? She used to play with you when you were little, and she was one of the ones who'd give you shirts. She gave you the Disco Shirt." The ridiculous old blue and gold shirt that Dick still loved even though it didn't fit him anymore had been contemptuously nicknamed by Jason. "She came to all the birthday parties you had at the zoo."

"Oh." Dick frowned. "Yeah...her."

"You remember her?"

"Yes."

Bruce read the letter out loud. Dick grew agitated near the middle, then burst out afterward, "I don't want to go back!"

"No one's making you go back. You never have to go to ABAZ again."

"She said perform. I don't want it, B!"

"You don't have to, Dick. No performing. She just pointed out that for any mer who wanted to, the law now requires that they be paid a fair wage and not be held captive. But I understand completely that you still wouldn't want to. No one will make you go anywhere near ABAZ again."

Dick grasped Bruce's ankle, gazed into the distance for a moment, then turned a worried expression back to his dad. "Don't let her have Tim."

"I'll keep Tim away from anyone who used to work at ABAZ," Bruce promised. He shared Dick's paranoia in this case. "Would you be willing to speak to Amanda, or should I just ignore her?"

Dick did not want to meet with her in person, but after some thinking, he decided to allow a video call. Amanda beamed when she saw him. "Dick! Hi, Dickie! Hi!"

"Hi."

"Do you remember me?"

"A little."

Her face fell for a moment, but then she smiled again. "It's Amanda. From the zoo, remember?"

"Yes," he snapped, so harshly that she looked taken aback.

"Dick has very unpleasant memories of ABAZ," Bruce put in.

"It wasn't all bad, though. Do you remember the birthday parties we put together for you, Dickie? And all those cute shirts you liked, and the toys?"

"You put me in a tank," he said. "I couldn't get out. You killed Mom and mer-Dad."

"Oh - Dick, sweetie, that wasn't me. That was other people who did that to you, remember? That wasn't me."

"ABAZ sucked. It sucked! I hate it!" As he spoke, he added with his hands, even though Amanda probably didn't know ASL, "Bad! No!"

"It...it's better now, Dickie. If you-"

"Why don't we stop talking about the zoo," Bruce suggested firmly.

The conversation limped along for a while, Amanda struggling to find a conversation topic that didn't trigger the mer and Dick shutting down her inquiries about Tim, evading her questions about the Titans, and growing bored with her reminiscing about the old days.

Eventually, though, they managed to make it onto the neutral ground of some TV show both Dick and Amanda's daughter liked. Then they talked about dating, and Amanda, having finally wised up, focused more on her daughter's boyfriend and high school experiences than on Dick. They finished up with a funny anecdote about Amanda's dog, then Dick pulled away and wandered off.

Amanda sighed. "He's mad at me."

"You have to understand, ABAZ was extremely traumatic for him," Bruce said. "There might have been a few bright spots, but the reality is that he was in captivity, Amanda. He lost his parents in such a horrific way, he was badly hurt throughout his childhood - emotionally, not just physically," he said forcefully when she tried to interrupt. "You're not the one who held that boy in his arms night after night as he cried. You're not the one who saw what a wreck he was after having been tossed in the middle of the ocean, a child all on his own with barely any training."

"I would have! If he'd chosen me instead of you, I would have loved to do all those things!"

"Would it have even occurred to you to try, Amanda? He only chose me because I treated him differently than the rest of you did. That's the only reason."

"I- It- We didn't know, Bruce. We had no idea what mer were capable of, we were just doing what we'd always done. How were we supposed to know?"

Bruce didn't bother pointing out that if he'd followed orders and just did what was always done as well, he would have never bonded with Dick, either. The kid would have probably died miserably like the rest of his enslaved people, far too young and wracked with the physical and mental toll of captivity.

"Just...leave him in peace, Amanda. He's free now, he has a home and friends and happiness, a future to look forward to. I won't cut you off, but don't...press. You were a part of the worst time in his life, you didn't even stand by him when he went public. Just look at your photos and let him move on."

She had drawn herself up in horror. "Are you talking about-? I did stand by him! Bruce, you know that video was fake."

"It was still ammunition in the enemy's hands. You could have at least kept quiet the entire time, but you spoke out to support ABAZ and discredit Dick. It doesn't matter if you weren't sincere; it's still on record."

"They were going to fire me, Bruce! They fired Mark, did you know that?! Mark works in municipal government now, he's blacklisted from marine theme parks. I didn't know it would be so dangerous when I first spoke up, and they didn't give me a choice about the retraction video. My husband doesn't make enough money to support us all on his own, I don't know how to do anything except work with the animals, it's my dream job, Bruce! Ever since I was a little girl, I wanted to work with mer and dolphins! I can't- I couldn't give it up! Would you ever give up Dick?"

"There are rescue and conservation organizations you could have switched to, or research teams that show respect for their subjects and the environment. And if you specifically wanted to stay in the animal entertainment industry, Amanda, that's your choice. You chose your dreams and your family over Dick, and I'm not going to criticize you for that. But I will protect my son. Stay at the park, Amanda, enjoy your family. But don't expect to be friends with Dick, too, if he's not interested. Leave him alone."

She was crying a little now. "I just wanted to see him again... I care about him, Bruce, I really do. I've always cared about him! I want him to be happy."

"I believe you, Amanda. So let him be happy."

She still looked miserable when they ended the call. Bruce sat quietly for a while, remembering the day Dick had been released into the ocean and how Amanda had been the one to drive Bruce to the marina so he could go after his lost child. He remembered how carefully she had noted Dick's preferences and brought him gifts he liked. He remembered how happy she had always been to play with the lonely little mer, and how much she'd helped Bruce when Ryan and the others were breathing down his neck.

She wasn't a bad person and he knew she genuinely cared about Dick. It was painful to see the selfish tinge to her actions and the lack of clarity in her vision. Losing her support had been a blow, but there was nothing he could do about it. Best to just appreciate the good times and move on, focusing on the future.

o.o.o

In the present, however, the book hadn't been published yet. When the release date neared, Bruce only consented to give a single in-person interview. He wanted to combine the book promotion with satisfying the general public's clamoring curiosity about his expanded family so he could be done with it. He was tempted to get Clark or at least Lois Lane to do the interview, but he had been persuaded that outsourcing would be too insulting to his hometown, so he settled for Vicki Vale.

Dick accompanied Bruce in front of the cameras and Alfred stood offscreen to support them. Jason and Damian were both media-shy; Tim had wanted to come, but Bruce had immediately envisioned all the trouble the curious little mer would probably get into and left him at home.

Bruce, Dick, and Vicki made themselves comfortable on a set designed to look like a living room. "So!" Vicki started. "Long time no see, Bruce!"

"It's nice to be back in Gotham, Vicki."

"And the famous Dick Wayne of the Teen Titans! How are you?"

"Good."

"Bruce is your adoptive father now, is that correct?"

"Yup."

"You've known him for quite a long time, huh?"

"He was my dad when I was little, after they killed my first dad." An offscreen interpreter had been hired for Vicki's sake. Bruce wasn't sure whether the final product would use subtitles or a voiceover, but guessed it would be the former since Dick sometimes did speak verbally.

"So he's been your dad for a while, huh, long before the Metahuman Rights Act was passed?"

Dick smiled and leaned his head against Bruce's shoulder. Bruce put an arm around him in affectionate acknowledgment.

"Bruce, what's it like to have a merboy for a son?"

"No different than for any other parent. I am very proud of all my children, their brilliance and accomplishments are incredible."

"No different, really?"

"Well, we do have to use adaptations for their mobility on land, their diet, things like that, but I know there are many families out there who deal with similar challenges all the time. As long as my kids are happy and healthy, that's all that matters.

"Speaking of your kids, that's what your book, Gifts From the Sea, is about, right?"

"Yes. I self-published the original version of part one, The Boy in the Fish Tank, to educate people when the issue of mer rights started to get prominent in public consciousness. I'm, er, not a professional writer, though, so I hired a co-writer this time. I promise the edited version is a lot more readable."

"Something to look forward to."

"Yes, and like I said, Fish Tank was only part one - there are things in the new book that I'm publicly revealing for the first time, so...I hope people will be kind to my children. They've already suffered and survived so much."

"ABAZ, huh?" Vicki said. Dick bared his teeth at the name.

"Yes," Bruce said, "and other things." He hadn't gone into detail about everything, and there were other parts he'd altered or kept secret. There was enough, though. Only cold-hearted, closed-minded people would be able to read the book and still think that his children were subhuman or bad in any way.

The interview went on. Dick was so charming and funny that Vicki often forgot to address Bruce, which Bruce didn't mind at all. They managed to acknowledge Dick as an allegedly-former Teen Titan without implicating Jason and Damian as fellow Titans.

Bruce answered briefly about Athanasia when asked, avoiding Talia's name and saying only that he'd worked out arrangements with the mother of his biological children. He mentioned that Talia had been an old college friend but was very vague about the circumstances of the children's conception.

"No, we're not together now," was the one thing he did say bluntly. "I am quite happily single. Being a father of five keeps me on my toes." He hoped the mention of his many children would deter at least some of the gold diggers. He wasn't happy with having to deal with them again after all his years away from Gotham.

Vicki had a lot of questions about Tim, and Bruce tried to present his son as an intelligent and curious child rather than the alien freak he knew most people still thought of the octo-mer as. "I don't know," he sighed at one point. "Octo-mer are apparently naturally elusive; Tim's the only one I've ever seen."

Then, in response to the next question, "Of course I'm not going to turn him over to a lab. He's a person and a growing boy with much more important things to do, like schoolwork. I'm not going to sacrifice my son's well-being for the sake of blind science. I am recording my observations, and a lot of my notes on Tim's development and abilities ended up in the book, so the scientists will just have to be satisfied with that."

At another point, he took some time to talk about trafficking. "The Metahuman Rights Act has helped a lot in that there's now a more systematic way to identify trafficking operations and prosecute those involved, but since it's always been an underground operation, it's still happening. Now that sea people have legal protections, we need to be shining a light on the criminals who prey on them - and not just them; other metahumans get trafficked, too, for various reasons. This is just as wrong as the trafficking of baseline humans, and it needs to stop. My son, Jason, has been working with the Wayne Foundation to create measures that will both help trafficking victims rebuild their lives and reduce the number of people getting trafficked in the first place."

They talked about marine mammal parks, about Dick's parents and even about captive animals like orcas, who were proven to suffer in captivity. They talked about the irresponsible way Dick had been 'released' by ABAZ long ago, and how rehabilitation was an important part of release programs. They talked about pollution and about the ways in which Dick and his siblings adapted to life on land. They talked about the unique challenges of metahumans and the various, often harmful ways society viewed them. They talked about aliens, and of course, Dick soon got sidetracked gushing about his girlfriend.

"Are you being safe?" Vicki asked interestedly. "What would you do if Kori got pregnant?"

"There would be a baby," Dick replied cheerfully.

"She's asking if you're prepared to be the teenage father of a hybrid child," Bruce mumbled, exasperated. At least Dick wouldn't be caught by surprise if such a thing did happen.

"We will get married and Asia will have a little brother or sister."

Bruce didn't bother to correct it to 'nephew or niece.' "They're being safe," he told Vicki. "I gave them The Talk." Which was an exaggeration. But whatever; he already had a fish son, a seal son, an octopus son, and two kids who could turn into multiple kinds of sea people at will. Adding a half-mer, half-Tamaranean baby to the mix shouldn't be much of a problem.

"Well," Vicki finished, "Gifts From the Sea, written by Gotham City's very own Bruce Wayne." She gave information about the book's upcoming release, then asked, "So, Bruce! Now that you've helped a landmark bill get passed, adopted some unique children, and written a book, what are you going to do next? Any plans for the future?"

"Not really," Bruce said, which wasn't entirely true. "I just want to do well by my kids, and right now, that means catching them up on their education. I'm trying to convince Dick to get his GED." He glared only half-playfully at Dick, who stuck his tongue out at him. Jason was a wonderful student and the younger boys, though uncooperative with their tutors, at least learned in ways that suited them, but Dick had only ever been interested in school as a place to hang out with friends.

"Well, good luck with that," Vicki chuckled. "You'll be staying in Gotham, I suppose?"

"Home is where the heart is," Bruce chuckled back. Vicki didn't call him out on the non-answer.

TBC