Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

There are things, he tells himself, that he'll never be forgiven for. That he will never forgive himself for. And then there are things he must push deep in him and learn to love again.    

      He thought himself a killer at age eight. 

      A plague that coughed and pushed wart cover fingers into fresh skin till it all bubbled over and grew sickly green. His imagination was always hyper active as a child and born from it all his best thoughts and crushing fears. In his night terrors he thought himself the bullet. To be this thing that was so much of a bystander as the alley walls, yet so impossibly intertwined with the cruelty. He was never the man behind the trigger though. It gave him too much power, too much say. These things; power, control, atonement, the ability to do anything, they are not things his brain deemed him worthy of. Instead constantly putting him as the on looker to his own massacre. The merciless bullet that only goes where it's thrown, harrowing death but having no will to stop. Small, thoughtless and innocent. All monster in its own, terrible, right. 

      Its no wonder he grew to hate guns but not people.

     He tried, for a while, but it never truly stuck. Bruce was, after all, his father's son. So tender to the heart and weak to the messes of man that his knees caved beneath him, and his hand searched for a needle and suture. Shaking with the need to stitch close any bleeding wound he could find. To threaded any broken pearl necklace back together. To fix, to cure, to heal.   

      He supposes it's what made him— and his father alike— such brilliant doctors. They cared more than any sane person with an ounce of self preservation would. Would yearn for it, put their own bodies at the side of harm and willfully muddied their hands with the grim of the worst of them. It didn't matter who it was, upper crust or dirt poor, aging father or sickly child, he just wanted to help. Aid in any way he could, to give back what he had already taken at such a young, useless, age. Gotham loved and punished him for it, the cruel mistress that she was. 

      But Alfred, the man who had raised him after all he could think of himself as was a destroying thing, always handled his grief with a sort of forgone acceptance. As if this was to be expected of him, as if his old eyes had seen it all before. He was the one that pushed those wrinkled hands, known to so many lives before him and had seen so much, threw his rain soaked bed of night black hair and kissed his chilly forehead and said nothing. Knowing that anything he could say would be a lie. Would feel like one all the same. 

      Alfred never looked more proud and more sad than the day Bruce graduated, top of his class, and took the oath. Officially a doctor, white coat and all. And when he smilled at the man he ran ragged with terror dreams and hatful words— For himself. For Alfred. For anything. For everyone— he saw there, for only a split moment, a look that was not made for him. A look that seemed so handcrafted, sown and double notted by stitches much cleaner than his.   

      He is learning to forgive the things he cannot love. 

      Learning to great them with gentle hands and a neddle and thread. Learning to half-lie to them. Tell them that 'Today, today we're going be better. Today we're living threw' and they'll smell the fib from deep in his bones but they'll try anyways because Alfred would have wanted him to. And that means a whole lot more now that Alfreds not around tell him so. 

      Now that the only one around to love Bruce Thomas Wayne is Bruce Thomas Wayne, he tries. Its damn hard but he keeps at it, he won't let the people who riased him down. He tries, cares for himself like the orphan he is. Knowing he must be gentle and calm voiced even when hes meet with spit hisses and mean curses. Knowing he must understand where his bruised heart is coming from, must see the fear and pain before he sees the anger and violence. 

      It's difficult and tiring work but he too, is his mothers son, and he had never known there to be a hand that she could not take gently into hers or there to be a face that she could not look at, smile, and believe in.

    Far, far, away from the home his parents once cradled his soft head in careful arms and coaxed the first sounds from wobbly lips, Bruce began to realize his house was never quite his home.

      It wasn't some grand terrible thing to realize. It didn't crumble his heart into pieces and well tears to his eyes, but that could have more to do with the fact that he had never felt more empty now then he had ever rather than the level of sadness such an epiphany required. The manor was simply not his home, it was more a museum of a history he never learned properly and walls of faces belonging to people it hurt to look at. 

      Bruce knew his father never muched like his grandfather. 

      Bruce had never heard the story of why. He had the portraits of Patrick Wayne taken down anyways. His mother never liked their attic, nor their bassment, and rarely strayed to the far side of the guest wing. Bruce didn't know why but he followed the same set of teachings, silently, watchfully. Alfred sleeped in the family wing and never in the butler’s quarters, he kept guns stocked piled around in hidden space Bruce tried his best to steer his eyes away from. Alfred spent most of his day in the kitchen, the living room, or in the library so Bruce did the same. 

      It was a set of unspoken rules, secrets kept for so long they simply bleed into the house floor boards and made arrows out of the red. Don't go there. Go here. Avoid this room. Watch that chandelier. Whispers permeated the hand carved walls, weariness was in every expensive pot. Bruce kept to his paved path, following after his parents backs like guiding arrows, no reason for venturing off when his whole world was right there. The manor wasn't his home, he did not know it the way his mother, nor father, nor Alfred did. He knew it by proxy, threw the slits of fingers from the hands that covered his eyes and blocked his sight from the worst of the atrocities.

      And with them all gone, Bruce had no need for empty haunted halls he was finally able to see. It suited being used as an art gallery, everything in it was too shiny, too perfect, to be lived in anyways.

      Where he lives now is smaller. Not by much, but enough not to make Bruce feel like he could walk down one hall and be lost to the world forever. Enough to know that he won't slip and slide away into the shadows looming in too dark corners. Its a quaint little one story thing with sand colored stucco walls and plenty of overlooking-the-sea balconies, on sunshine shores somewhere off the coast of Europe.

      But it wasn't home either.

      No, home sounds a lot more like lapping waves knocking him ajar, feet never quite as steady here then they were on land. It took all the class out the walk, when every sway made him cock his hip to compensate there was no real point of walking in a fine line. Home smelt like salt and oil, it looked like blinding blues, and it felt warm and calm. Like a pencil in hand and nothing but the never ending spanse of open blue and the way the sun glints off the rippling of water. Its a was place where he was known to nothing and no one and yet so a part of everything, moving as one under the sun. 

      It was perfect, and numbing, going so unknown and unseen yet not alone. 

      He lost hours to the tides, rare would he sink an anchor into the dunes of the sea floor, instead letting the waves tug him along as they pleased. He had enough food on the boat to last him a week lost at sea, and enough knowledge of the surrounding coast to safely pull himself ashore should it come to that. Mostly though, he'd turn home when the sun lowered itself less than a hand's width between it and the line of blue of the water and the blue of the fading pink sky. As it were now, he had hours plenty before he had to turn home and four pages of his sketchbook full of seagulls who had come to rest on the roof of his yacht. 

      His pencil scratched the shadows under the orange bill of the last gull of the flock, mind bemoaning itself for his lack of forsught for color pencils, when a sudden jostle knocks his hand from it corse and drags a long, unsightly line of deep graphite up and off the page. He gives himself a healthy amount of minutes to mourn his collection of bird sketches before dragging himself to his feet from the beach chair he had pulled to veiw of his roof to check that they have not run muck into any wayward rocks. 

     The next knock rocks the boat hard enough to nearly tips him off his feet, concern spilling in his mind like an unseen bout of downpour. Bruce heads for the engine with a fast pace, worried that he might have caught some poor sea life in his propellers. He is far from when he spotted a pod of Orcas that one truly memorable time– but migration was the way of ocean life and these waters were plentiful in their fish and creatures. His hands move to the dashboard of the ship, killing the propellers in a smooth sputtering sound as the ship stills in the water. 

     Without the werwing of the engines fans or the soft calls of the seagulls the world around him falls to the quiet, as if in wait, and Bruce draws a anticipated breath in matching. 

      At first, there is nothing. 

      The waves lap gently against the yacht's white sides and rock it gentle as a mother lulling a baby to sleep, and then, all at once the surface of the water breaks open and something comes flying from the deep blue. 

     A creature springs from the water, splattering droplets as it breaks the surface tension, each shifting oblong drop glinting tiny rainbows in the sun's eye before dropping back into the world below. The creature, in contrast, lands gracelessly on the sandy white wood of his yacht, flopping and struggling about in a fighting effort for air like any other fish reeled in. But it is nothing like any fish he had ever seen, so much smaller than any shark but massive in the way of a fish like salmon. It looked half human almost.

      A mermaid.

One halled from the depths and straight out of the fantasy books his mother would read him to sleep as a child, landed smack dab in the middle of his boat with no warning that if he had not seen it spring from the ocean itself he would have guessed it simply dropped from the sky. A mermaid… Only this mermaid looks more like a lad then a maiden and more like child then either and– oh fuck. 

     Hes choking on a fishing net.

     Rushing closer, the first thing that steals his eyes is a tail. Bright and sky blue shimmering in it white opulence, scales fading into tan skin that leads to a small neck being scratch at by even smaller claws as the creature struggles against the twine that chokes its breathing, flabs of skin pooling in the gaps of the net in a horribly painful way and sharp claws rip away chunks of its own flesh. The boy's chest rises and falls, gasping for air that their lungs can only reach for, blue gills fluttering desperately, eyes staring unseeingly up at the towering sun and floating clouds.

     Dithering longer then he should, his mind kicking itself for wasting moments that were crucial, Bruce grabs for the nearest sharp thing— a pair of scissors he uses to cut open particularly troublesome snacks— he can manage and drops to he knees next to the dying thing and begins to work. Thankfully the creature seems to prioritize by the wire keeping its air then the foreign hands pressing cold blades against its skin, it makes his work far easier. Careful to avoid the lacerating claws of the lad, he snips and wars with the twisting wire. And when finally, Bruce catches the last of the twin between the mouth of the scissors and fights the metal to give, snapping it loose from skin, the boy sucks in a gasp of air as it body shakes around it.

      The mer, tired no form its struggles no doubt, collapses in a harsh pant. Breathing in oxygen like it would never return to it again and leaves Bruce to gap in awe.

      He had seen them in books, mythical creatures that some had searched desperately to probe where so much more than myth, he would have never counted on one being before him in real life. Especially not one this young. Where were its parents? Where was its pod for that matter. Not even the most independent species leave their young alone at, what Bruce could only assume, was the human equivalent of four. 

      Lost in his thoughts and concern, Bruce does not hear the way the breathing of the child next to him turned to soft trills, nor the near silent way something else slips from the water and creeps its way towards him. 

      Nothing untill a hand, tipped in much sharper claws and webbed with a deep blue membrane that blink the sun through the gaps of its fingers with a dreaming hue, swip for his face with a shrieking cry.

Chapter Text

They come for the child. 

Slithering masses with bodies half like his and the lower half so very different. They almost share the same blinding blues as the lad— the same species most likely— with streaks of bright red running down the sides of their tails that the young one does not bare. Bruce doesn't have much time to study them as he had the boy in his rush to scamper away from the claws aiming for his face. The two adults positioned themselves between him and the lad, the more feminine-looking mer wrapping the child up in her arms and tucking his face safely into his neck like a mother soothing a child. Soft trills clicking and cooing between them as the second adult guards them, hissing and snapping sharp rows of teeth. 

It sets upon him like a fury. Righteous and vengeful, come to punish the sins of a man that was not him, but it is not as if Bruce could argue that. To them, he was just as great an unknown monster as they are to him. 

He stumbled out of the way of the mer's next swipe, getting his feet under him and trying to back away but the creature followed him in a dogged effort.  Bruce tried not to seem as if he was attempting to fight back but he would rather prefer not to be trapped between a wall and a very pissed off animal. The movement of the mer was not nearly as fluid as Bruce might have guessed, its tail slapping and dragging behind them in a useless heap, one hand under them to pull themselves forward in a way that must be scrapping their scales uncomfortably against the wood of the deck, thin fins as useful as wet tissue paper in strong wind. 

They move like they are expecting water to carry the heft of their weight, clunky downward swips no doubt would be quite beautiful arcs had they been where they belonged. Here, out in the open air under the eyes of a man so similar and yet so different from them, it was outcasted. Rejected by the world around them and killing them for it no doubt.

How long could they survive out of water? Bruce wondered, worry beginning to seep through the fear of being injured. The mother and the child seemed fine, for now, but the father seemed to only be getting worse as their moments continued on. Gills fluttering as it pulls in more and more air, they make another jab and falter, the pillar of their arm giving. The lasp is momentary but its enough. If Bruce had wanted to hurt them, he could have and the other adult mer seems to recognize this by the sheer amount of terrifying yet desperate noises she begins to make. Like she can already see the blood splatter. 

But Bruce. Bruce doesn't want to hurt anyone. Ever. He knows the types of stains blood leaves, the way it pebbles and stays forever under you're fingernails.

He doesn't move. And no one does. And when the mer gets up, breathing no less labored, theres something else in their eyes. A desperate trill beckons it back, the child having flipped himself out of its mother's arms and on top it’s stomach, squirming and shaking, edging with thin limbs towards them as their mother reaches after them desperately. Wide eyes scared and bubbling over with tears, red rashes over its neck where the twine strangled. The mer twitches away from him on instinct it seems, quickly casting a glance over their shoulder. Bruce doesn't move an inch, watching as the mer rejoins its family, leaving them to collect their youngling and seeming to meld into the female mer like they had always been made from one body.  

Coddling the young lad into their arms, the older mer crawls until they grab the edge of his boat and slip over the side, and the other mer moves to do the same. Pausing to glance back at his still unmoving form, something he was too far away or too out of it to name swirling in her eyes before she too slips over the ledge and back into the deep. The only thing announcing their departure was the soft sound of a splunk, like a rock being dropped to the bottom of a river bed. 

Bruce slumps against his lounge chair, left with nothing but the quiet lapping of waves and the distant sound of seagulls, wondering what in the hell he might have put in his coffee this morning to hallucinate all this. 

A cracked clam with a clump of a pearl shows up at the end of his dock, the opposite side of his yacht, almost a week later. 

The clam looks sloppily beaten open, like someone took a rock to the lips of it, chipping off pieces of it’s dusty brown and grey shell till little fingers could slip between the beaten open hole and pry the muscle open at the joint like a loose hinge of a gate and left it. Untouched and undisturbed past its initial cracking. 

At what was essentially— given a few feet and the steps up the small backdoor covering his hesitates to call a porch— his doorstep. 

Carefully, as if expecting some camera crew to jump from the bushes and flash bright lights in his face caroling on about some 'prank bro'— at least, that is what he assumed young folk did when wanting to heckle old folk these days— the clam is impressively small in his hands compared to how he would imagine it fitting in a child's. His hand curved around the shellfish, the crooks of his inner first knuckles crossed by the thinner edges of the creature, his thumb rubbing over the shiny smooth inside that feels both between touching a satin and brushing a hand over sand.

With the shell cracked open and its fleshy almost-pink insides exposed, you can see quite clearly the small clam is hiding something rather big.

When his fingers first grasped for his mom's own pearls, they meagerly fit around them. Odd natural circles in the fist more fat than bones. Seconds later, they ended up in his mouth and under his teeth as his mother tittered prettily and made half attempts to tug them away. He had learned later— sat on his father's knee, looking up for an answer like he did with most everything at that age. Always tottling after the people in his life that knew better, that always had an answer or were willing to find it for him— that the pearls his mother wore, while very pretty and extremely expensive, were far from organic. 

"See" His father had said, in a tone that both awed Bruce and made him feel far smarter than his age, to be talked to like he could understand even the most complexes of sciences at the age of four— "See pearls come from abrasion, sand and gunk and such, that slip past the clam mouth and into it's insides. So, to stop the irritant from being, well, irritating, the clam with collect it into one spot and after many years and lots of pressure, it forms a pearl."

He went on to explain how Bruce's mother's pearls were different. How the clam was given an already perfect ball of material to form its pearl around and grown in farms. He explained how, more often than not, wild clams produced what jewelers would call 'unsightly' or 'unusable'.

The pearls his mother once wore were perfectly round without blemish and with perfect luster. They often catered the envy of many, shining white wrapped around her throat strung by a thread so thin it was practically invisible— and years later would see them scattered across an alleyway's street, splattered with blood as the person who desired them more than he wanted to spare a life took off into the night and left a child to morn. 

This pearl was nothing like that. 

It was oblong and bulged in unsightly and inconvenient places. It was no bigger the the pad of his middle finger and the collar was neither sparkling white nor a distinctive blue but instead something on the in-between. It was by, all professional accounts, an unusable pearl fit to be discarded and the clam left to be eaten by seagulls. And yet, Bruce can't help but wonder if maybe his mother wouldn't have preferred to have a collection of these misformed, not nearly blue, pearls over the ones that only ever seemed dreadfully simple compared to her complexities. 

Bruce rolls it around in his hand, or rather, pushes it over on its sides seeing that the thing, with its multitude of uneven mounds, doesn't so much roll as it does flop to its next even face. He'd wonder who brought it for him but then that would be an insult to the smarts Alfred tried so hard to instill in his ward.

Bruce trudges back into his house with the pearl in hand and steps back out moments later, the pearl gone but replaced by a seashell from his shores just a little bit bigger than the size of the clam. 

This.. this little gift, it felt an awful like a 'thank you' and he had been raised far better than to allow gratitude of any sort go without an acknowledgment.

'You're welcome' 'I hope you're okay' and 'don't thank me, of course i'd help'

Ran through his mind as he set the seashell down in the same spot as the clam. 

He hoped the sentiment carried over atoms.

The gifts didn't come nearly as frequently as Bruce would have been comfortable with. Feeling less and less of an assumed appreciation from those mers he saved that one time and more and more like one very specific, and very young mer, going behind their parents' back to leave little trinkets for a human said parents would not approve of them meeting let alone seeing. 

The clams were sporadic, as if an overactive mind caught one out of the corner of their eye once and a while and couldn't resist the urge to toss it up to their favorite land lover, and were quickly being replaced by a myriad of other things Bruce had no better idea what to do with then with the clams.

Between the rusting fish hooks hes afraid to touch even with his up-to-date tetanus shots, mishappen pearls, fish skulls, and fish bones, what he thinks might be a shark took or a tooth of a very scary fish, an octopus beak, and multiple frosted glass pieces and smooth rocks he sure would skip over the surface of the water without issue but is scared to try because he pretty sure finding your thoughtfully giving present on the bottom of the shore bank of the deck of the person the present is supposed to be with is a quick-fire way to break a poor merkid's heart and that's definitely a sure-fire way to get mad meradults on his ass. 

It takes him approximately two weeks, a day and a half, and having to both buy and reorganize my storage system to accommodate his influx of, mostly, useless clutter, till he catches his little gift-giver in action.

The sun had barely woken itself up to do its job, laxing over the horizon with its dusty oranges and blushing pinks pushing back the black of night and Bruce was contemplating his mortality and whether or not he had any right to heal and get better when he was the reason the people who loved him most died. Rethinking, like he does most mornings before he makes an effort to try to be kind to himself, that if he had never been there at all at least his parents would still be alive. 

Regardless. He having a proper depression bout, as Alfred would say, when he heard more than he saw the sound of surface tension being ripped, spotting small-clawed fingers cling to the tan wood of the dock and beginning to push themselves up.

There, with a wrench more rust orange than silver cradled between its sharp teeth. Something that's certainly not healthy for this poor lad’s health. Bruce moved on pure instinct, already walking over to hold his hand under the child's jaw,

"Drop it, thats not good for you" He chides to wide, shocked crystal blue eyes. 

So much like his and yet so very different.

The child doesn't drop the tool, he drops his whole self. Disappearing back into the deep and out of sight, the water nowhere near as clear by his shores as they were out at sea and Bruce has to lean precariously over the edge of his dock and squint to see the shadow of the boy still curled up on the sea floor. Unmoving. Like an animal that flipped over on its back to play dead.

How does one call a mer back to the surface without scaring them further?

Are there handbooks for this?

.... should he start writing one?

Bruce reaches out his hand over the pear, far enough that anything could reach for him and tug him into the water to drown him— hes pretending that's not something that terrifies him but his thudding heart rate calls him a stinking lier— dipping his fingers into the cold ocean and wiggling them around. Rippling the water around them in rings of displacement. Its a shot in the dark, one that hes almost sure isn't going to work when after a few minutes the shadow doesn't move. 

Maybe hes seeing things. Maybe thats not a mer at the bottom of his dock but a rock, a rock that has always been there and Bruce is losing his mind being away from other people for as long as he has. Maybe—

Small, hesitant fingers wrap around his own as a face stares up at him from just below the water's surface and Bruce feels his heart trip over itself in fear. Everything in his being screams run, that this so very different from when it was on his boat. When he had his feet solidly planted on ground and not leaning over the edge of a dock just waiting to be pulled off balance. This could be tipped out of his favor so quickly, he was edging on the end of his rope looking into the abyss.

Bruce forces a smile on his face anyway.

"I didn't mean to scare you," He offers up softly, turning his hand palm ways towards the lad's curious digits and watching as he traces over clawless fingertips and webless in-betweens— so similar yet so vastly different— and hopes his voice isn't too muffled by water, "Would you come back up?" 

The child's eyes drift back to his and hold for a long time, long enough to feel like hes seeing something past just looking at Bruce. Then, as if making up his mind, the mer's grip turns sure and tight, allowing Bruce to tug him up from the depths. 

Bruce has come to learn that the child's name is Richard. 

Or rather, its a series of trills and clicks and chirps that when Bruce tried to replicate all he got for his troubles was a seriously sore throat and a merchild giggling at him. Threw trials and error, and after many days of teaching a different species the English alphabet, they both managed to make a, semi-accurate, translation chart which gave them a spelling of 'Risharf' that Bruce tuck it upon himself to just simplify to 'Richard' and swear never to become a linguist. 

Richard, despite the struggle to find out that name, much prefers when Bruce calls him the nickname of Dick instead, often shying away like a child chastised when Bruce brings out his full name. Which was.. understandable, Bruce would always go into hiding the rare few times his parents would call him by his name instead of any of their multitudes of sweethearts and babies. 

Its shocking just how human the boy is and then, its also really not. 

Dick gets upset, he'll rant in trills that Bruce only barely understands and huff and flap his hands and complain. Dick gets happy, he flings himself at Bruce when he wants out of the water and coo and clicks a story away about his newest treasure. Dick does dangerous flips off the dock, out of the water and Bruce has caught him more than once trying it off his yacht. Dick is a troublemaker, he thinks sneaking around is funny, he's bright and happy and carefree, he has troubles, he has parents who love him, but then, of course he does.

Of course he would have all and be all those things, he's a child, just like dozen of other children that live on land and Bruce loses a little bit of himself in Dick's smile. 

It's easier with Dick around, there only so much dwellingbon his worst parts Bruce can do when he is also trying to balance trying to keep a slippery and odly slimy baby mer from army crawling his way across the beach and into Bruce's house and the fruitless effort of not getting his clothes soaked on a daily basis.

The first time Bruce recognizes a trill-click-pop-trill to be Dick's specific call for him, like the ones he's come to learn Dick uses to refer to his parents, he knows he never stood a damn chance. Dick and his toothy smile and shinning baby blues had Bruce's whole heart and then some, he had it from day one without even trying.

He could only hope mers are better with co-parenting than humans are.

Chapter Text

The first time Bruce meets Dick's parents— or second time really but Bruce would rather not count the called-off murder attempt as a meeting. It didn't show off Dick's parents personality in the slightest— the poor lad couldn't look more guilty for it. 

Caught like a dog with his tail between his metaphorical legs, wide, round sorry eyes as he lumbered his way on top of Bruce's peer with no gift in hand but finally using the buoy platform Bruce had installed for him so he could stop scrapping his scales against the rough edge of the dock's wood. 

He was delighted to see him, as he always was. Breaking away from his scattered tools and wiping the oil on his hands off on his khaki shorts—he could already see Alfred’s disapproving eyebrow raise at his choice of clothing in his mind's eye— more than willing to take a break from trying, and failing, to fix whatever the hell was wrong with his boat that was making it make this god awful ticking noise.

His own brows scrunch to a small furrow as Dick almost reluctantly slithers his way into Bruce's arms, worry edging his voice as he brushed the boys perpetually wet hair from out of his eyes, blinking down at matching baby blues,

"Whats wrong champ?"

Dick snuggled his way deeper into the side of Bruce's neck, letting out a small, sad trill, before pointing his hand towards the water. 

Confused for a moment, thinking maybe Dick was sad about not being able to bring a gift, Bruce looked toward where Dick pointed to and felt his soul leave his body for a moment as two pares of eyes staring back from below the surface, all rest of the creatures forms hidden in the shadow of the dock. Déjà vu lapping over his mind as he reared back, hands tightening in the grip on Dick and taking several steps away from the edge of the dock. 

The Mer in his arms didn't seem particularly alarmed by the other eyes watching them, only bothering to let out another tiny trill and crossing his arms over his chest, gills flaring. Almost deliberately leaning against Bruce's chest in the most loose-limed, nearly dead-weight, sprawl hes ever seen the boy take. Using Bruce's arms more as things to drap over than as something connected to another person's body. Shooting a look at the eyes in the water. 

Bruce has no idea what the hell is happening, too on the edge to move any further away and certainly not stepping any closer until the unknown guests prove to be no threat. 

Seconds pass by and he thinks maybe this is how they'll stay forever. A slimy mer child slowly getting limper and limper in his arms by the moment, boots glued to the wood of his deck and staring down at the water like a loon waiting to see who breaks first.

They do.

Months later, Bruce will recognize it for the test that it was and feel pride he passed it so unconsciously.

Hands, tipped with sharp claws and so much bigger than he had been expecting— He had been, perhaps a bit foolishly, expecting Dick to have brought over friends— a set of two grab onto the edge of the deck and bodies, dripping with seawater, hall themselves onto the pear. Black hair curled into bushy sets of hair and matching blue eyes with their son staring Bruce down for all hes worth. 

Well then...

Bruce wishes he could say it was easier after that.

It was not. 

Theres no arguments per se, but there is a very clear understanding of boundaries. Primarily being that Bruce may interact with their son as much as he wants but *they* are off-limits. They don't try to talk to him, not once. Not when he tries to explain the messily translated alphabet he and Dick worked so hard on. 

It kills him a little, if only because he can see how much it kills Dick. How happy the Mer becomes when he spots his parents sitting on a far rock across the beach from Bruce and him playing in a small tide pool only to drop when they refuse to bring themselves any closer than a few feet. Frankly, he understands their apprehensions, they trust him to be no harm but that does not mean they hold affection for him. 

He knows any man like him should be grateful hes allowed even that but.. Well, Waynes have never been known to leave things half done. 

He brings them both a gift the next morning. Nothing complicated, just a simple braided hair band with a few strung sea shells to Dick's mother in hopes to help keep that fuzzy curly hair he always sees her shooing away like a pesky bird throughout the day, and a, mostly, wet proof pillow for Dick's father due to the odd shuffling the man does with his tail when sunbathing like he's uncomfortable. Bruce doesn't say anything about them, simply leaving them out on their favorite resting spots and going about his day.

When they come up to him, a few feet from the dock, as always, and splash water on him with their tails, something they've seen Dick do to get his attention— though theirs splash is fair more the light mist he gets for the smaller mer— holding their gifts aloft and staring at him, they didn't need to say anything for him to know their feelings.

"Those are for you," He sets down his tools and turns to them properly, thinking through each word as carefully as possible, "I know you don't like me, or humans at all I don't think but I.. I would like a chance to get to know you and for you to know me." 

Bruce's eyes flick between their faces, trying to spot any shift or movement in them in the slightest for some confirmation that hes being heard and not just talking to the atmosphere,

"I think we could be friends, real friends. So please, give me a chance to prove it to you."

Things do get better after that. Slowly. Like watching a plant sprout from a pot, scared that the seed might never have taken root only to be presently surprised at the first shine of green. Bruce brings them more gifts. Dick loses his mind when he finds this out, never one to be left out of good things, so Bruce starts trading gifts with the little mer as well and somehow that grows into *all* of them shifting around gifts together. 

Bruce's nicknack shelves grow thrice its size and he has little idea on what to do about it. 

Its a great dilemma to have.

Over time, he warms them up to English, they seem to catch on a lot faster than Dick— much to the boy's charging— and they tell him, in their own warbles half words, their names. Sitting under the setting sun and it glows the horizon a blush pink and magical purple, with his pants rolled up to the knees and his feet kicking gently against the waves of the ocean. Hes so surprised by it, he doesn't notice when Dick jumps up from beneath the dock and pulls him into the water.

He can't even mind the sock of cold water and soaking clothes because when they all laugh together it sounds like a flock of songbirds singing the gentlest of tunes.

John and Mary don't come with Dick every day, some days its just him alone and his boy, sitting alone on the dock reading about robins— The lad's personal favorite after Bruce showed him a sketch of it and pointed out their red is just the same as the one on his parent's scales— or just talking about whatever flys the boys fancy. Never the same language, not completely anyway, but understanding each other all the same. 

Most days though. 

Most days Bruce sits side by side with all of them, listening to the beautiful music of their laughs and feeling, for once, a little home on land.

It's hard to remember what being alive feels like.

Lying back on his queen-sized bed. Cotton sheets were soft and downy smelling against his skin, and his duvet and covers tossed to the other side of the bed. He can see the fan, brown and oblong, spinning above his head. He can tell the sun's slowly rising above the horizon line, turning the pitch black sky a lighter blue only to bloom into a myriad of pinks and oranges like the flowers at the touch of spring air. He can feel the rise and fall of his chest, and hear the little whisper of his nose still clogged from a sleep he can't seem to get back to.

He knows by the small shiver of his shoulders that he is cold. He knows he should roll over, grab his blankets, and warm himself, or better yet, get up and put something on more prepared for the bit the wind of the morning sea pushes in.

He knows he's cold.

He struggling to feel it though.

Moments like these aren't particularly new to him. Times when it seems like his brain and his body would disconnect and one would step away from the other and they would both just be. His eyes would go hazy and blurred, his normally twenty-twenty vision fogging over to nothing he could make sense of, and a body that stopped feeling like it was his miles and miles and miles ago. Pieces of him are scattered across the world and he can't muster up the courage to pick himself up long enough to go looking for them.

Before, Alfred used to talk him through it. 

For a man with so few words to say, when he noticed the silence in the manor grows thick, he would make a point to make more noise than he would normally allow. A butler was to be quiet, out of the way, and always available says the man, but in moments like this, Bruce would hear pots and pans clink together in the kitchen sink. Hear the sound of perfectly polished shoes clicking their way down perfectly polished floors. Hear the soft humming of some toon Bruce could never get quite right without mimicking Alfred's accent. 

And more, the man would talk.
For nothing and no reason whatsoever. 

Bruce had spent so much of his life hearing only what was necessary from his butler that he had grown by instinct to tune in whenever Alfred opened his mouth to speak. Even if the man was simply asking unanswered questions about the weather, what book Bruce was reading, how school was going, and if those Tomson boys were still giving him any trouble again. 

And Bruce would sit, feeling thousands of miles away, and listen. Listen till his body didn't feel so much like a stranger. Listen until he could once again feel the movement in his hands, could understand how his skin felt rather than just know. He would listen until he could force his mouth to work again and then he would talk. He would talk and keep talking till Alfred smiled something small, something soft like he was happy to see Bruce finally made it back home.

Bruce... Bruce hasn't talked to anyone in weeks. 

It's a bad morning. Bruce doesn't need anyone around to see the look on his face and tell him because he knows. He knows his brain is working on an overdraft, blowing fumes on the highway and the nearest rest stop is still lifetimes away. 

He's not doing well. 

He hasn't been doing well for a while now.

Honestly, Bruce feels less and less like a person the more time goes on. His view of himself shifting and warping to a handful of bad days hidden under a trench coat, ambling along this road of life like he's got any damn right to it. 

He's been doing what he can, trying to be kind to himself the way he knows he should be. To pat himself on the back and tell himself it going to be okay. To smooth down his hair and remind himself he's not a monster for being alive, for wanting to be alive. It's a constant uphill battle and he loses his will fight gravity more often than not but he's trying. 

And there has to be some sort of pride in that, never minding what sayings write, there has to be some kind of worth in just trying for a little while.

He pulls himself up from his bed at the right hours in the morning, ignores the sting of his eyes that are truly closed, and drags himself into the shower and under the warm water. It doesn't matter how much his brain screams he doesn't deserve it because he does. He's alive and he's breathing and he deserves to be treated kindly. He trying.

He stopped looking at himself in the mirror by day three. 

He steps out of the shower, steam lapping at his heels and the boiled red of his skin spells out something he is more than happy to ignore. He rubs the towel over himself and avoids looking— he knows what he'll find. Knows he'll see ribs where there shouldn't be. Knows he'll see something that he'll have to address so it's better to just not look— wrapping the towel around his neck slipping whatever pair of clothes he can find and making his way down the stairs to his kitchen.

Standing in front of his coffee machine, listening to its will its little song of work, staring out the window in front of him looking at the broad blue of the ocean lapping and the sandy white of his beach. There's nothing out there waiting for him and when the machine under his hands beeps it's done, he pours himself a cup and ignores the food slowly rotting away in his fridge. Turning around to amble his way back up the stairs. 

Dick has been gone for... well, Bruce has honestly stopped counting, but it couldn't have been that long.

Bruce hopes he's gone for just a little while longer, just until this little spell blows over. He doesn't want the kid to see him like this, all hollowed out and sunk in the eyes. Living only because he can't make himself do anything else. 

He'll be back to normal eventually— he promises to the nothingness around him, climbing back into his bed with a half-full mug slotted down next to the dozen others taking over his bedside table and pulling the covers over his head to block out the light of the sun— sometime around later he'll go about the chore of picking up the shattered parts of him and fitting them back together and to seeping away the leftovers but until then,

He just needs some rest. 

Bruce wakes to the sound of something screaming. 

It was bloody and raw and terrifying. It puts his heart so low in his chest that if it weren't for its relentless hammering he would have thought it would have put out of him completely. 

He's up in an instant, feet fumbling to slip into his house shoes, the stairs creaking under each foot as he thunders down them to rip the door open. Wind and rain whipped around, shaking the few palm trees lining the beach like they wouldn't rest till they fell and rattling the very foundation beneath him. The sea is pitch black and murderous, rocky jagged waves rocking his yacht so fierce it could be flipped over and all Bruce can hear is screaming.

Bleery and unable to see beyond his feet, Bruce steps into the storm. Arm tossed over his head to keep the rain from his eyes, his first attempt to call out falls on deaf ears, the winds stealing away the words before they could even carry. He edges his way closer to the yelling, onto the unstable rocking of his dock until he can squint his eyes just enough to see a heap of something writhing at the very end. 

"Dick?" He calls out, amping up his voice in the hope to beat the storm, "Dick!"

Moving quicker now, careful placement of his feet, the soles of his house shoes not made to balance on the slipper water-swollen wood of the peer. Closer, the screams sound less so like screams and more like heavy sobbing, gut-wrenching, and heartbreaking. Loud and heavy, words that Bruce can't understand laced between them in uneven breaths. Dick sounds like he's dying and when Bruce finally gets close enough to drop down to his knees and pull the boy into his arms, wrapping him up into his soggy shirt, hands flutter across his skin trying to find out what's wrong but his hands are useless against this unseen pain and Dick is still breaking apart within them. 

"It's okay, I have you. I've got you, Dick, please" He tries to hush the wailing, worries clogging up his throat and burning him from the inside, tears pebbling in his eyes no matter how hard he blinks it back. Dick is in pain, somewhere, and Bruce needs to fix it. To make it better. Helping people in pain is the one thing he is good at and he can't even—

His hands pause where they are smoothing over the mer's back, his hand sliding over something sticky and far more slick than rain on skin and when he pulls his fingers away, his hand comes back covered in red.

Chapter Text

Bruce stumbles back into the house with a wailing child in his arms. His screen door catching the gust of wind and ripping out of his hands and slamming against the pannaling of the side of the house. He leave its fluttering there. Instead focusing his effort on getting them out of the storm. His knees threatening to give under him and his heart tearing apart in his chest, shivering and shuddering from the cold rain soaking through his clothes and skin and right down to his bones, and he barley makes its three steps past the front door before he collapses.

Dick is scratches holes into his arms with dull nails and webless fingers and Bruce... he doesn't even know where to start with that. So he doesn't.

He wraps himself around the child tight, curled like a hand over fist trying to keep out the worst of it, of any of it, of all of it. Theres nothing he can fix. No wound he can stitch up and Dick can't hear him like this so he offers himself instead, the tight feeling of being held and the thudding heart beating away in childs ears. He'd pry his chest open if he could, if he was allowed to offer that mercy, tuck the boy deep within and keep him safe from the world Bruce knows from so much experience can be so harsh, can be so cruel to those who don't deserve it. A gentle rumble of his voice in his chest is all he can manage, hoping the vibrations soothes even if the words don't carry.

And when he words fall dead in his throat, choked up by tears hes bitting back, he holds the child tighter and prays it'll be enough. 

The storm carries on, mighty and furious, shaking the world on its foundations and Bruce prays.

Bruce wakes to the gentle sound of seagulls yelling, crowing their tails of the sea into the sky and making a general nuisance of themselves and making his head throb. Really earning their nickname of beach rats. If it weren't for the hefty amount of weight in his arms, the distinct memories of blood and screaming that he doesn't think he'll ever forget and the fact that he knows he doesn't keep in booze around his shack, Bruce would almost believe he relapsed again.

But no. He, and the lad laid deap asleep in his arms, just passed out on the floor after the events of yesterday. Not particularly good on his aging back but neither was carrying nearly seventy pounds of mer-baby all the way across the beach in the middle of the storm. 

Bruce casts his eyes down to Dick, tucked tight to his chest with his arms curled infront of his face, puffy red around the eyes with tear stains still tracking down his cheeks. Further down was–

"Oh." Bruce felt his breath catch in his throat, what was left of his already hurting heart breaking further apart like peices of glass being crushed to dust beneath a heel. 

There the were, the very things he could have convinced himself he hallucinated if their weren't staring them back in the face. Two pairs of human legs. Nobbly rosey knees of a babe, still pudgy with baby fat yet sorta gangly in a way that spells the owner was going to go through quite the akward puberty phase as they get taller but fail go grow into their limbs until much later. 

Dick... had legs.

And Bruce... oh lord help him, he had no idea what todo with that. He isn't nearly prepared enough, just barley recovering from his shock himself when Dick begins to stir in his arms. Sleepy grumbles of a person not yet ready to wake up, a few chirps fall from the lad's lips before beautiful crystaline blue eyes pop open and almost look happy to see Bruce first thing. Though they turn curious and concerned when the smile is not returned, eyes fading from their sleepy blur like its all flooding back. 

Dick looks down, and Bruce should have known what was coming next but it still almost spooks him out of his skin when the boy parts his lips and lets out a ear bleeding scream.

Dick wails, fat clear tears like glass marbles pooling in every corny of his eyes and bubbling over to stream down his cheeks. He screams and he cries till the voice that had barley recovered from yesterdays fit breaks all over again and dies silent in his throat once more, leaving his tiny body alone in its trembling. 

Small hands claw themselves tight into Bruce still damp sweater, droplets of left over rain water running down thin wrist as if seaking to replace the liquid the boy has all cried out by now, curling closer to him as his hides his face away. His cheeks, just begging to ween off baby fat, are pushed hard enough to Bruce chest, hes sure that the boy jaw is being shifted out of line because of it, 

and big baby blues stare down at the fleshy appendages like they've betrayed him, as if they've commited one grave horror onto the lad nothing in the world could take back. 

And Bruce... Bruce is left with his hands full of a child who needs him and no clue what todo and for moment, a blinding second and a half, he wonders if this what his parents felt when they first held him. So gut wrenchingly scared of doing anything wrong, the world so open and expansive, and them, so small and helplessly lost. 

He wonders if it wasn't like that at all.

If it came to them like it was natural, instinct picking up like they were born to do it. 

Wonders if anyone ever feels the way he does in this very moment, if its normal, or if its the sickness he knows hides deep in his bones creeping up his throat again.

If its is, just as its always been, just him.

He has no clue what todo. Where he should even start with any of this, how would he? One moment he was curcled up tight as a ball in his bed willing his nightmares to leave him alone and now— now the sun is shining down on the word as if nothing as changed and mer child with human legs is shaking in his arms. 

Hes never had less of a train of thought to fallow.

Still, he trys. Pulling his mind from the sluggish numbness it has been sunk into for that past however long is like dragging a weight from the bottom of the river, forcing his mind to piece together plan that gets the engine of his brain to chug along the tracks once more.

Clothes.

Dickie is going to need clothes. His will do for now but if— if...

He pushes past that stutter, forcing himself not to slow down because he knows it'll only result into him grinding to a stop, to curling up in on himself and loosing himself to the gripping darkness of it all being too much. How much better it feels when he doesn't feel any thing at all.

He can't let himself sink. Can't. 

He picks up the pieces, not his own, but the child's . Handles every broken shard laid out on the floor of Dickie shattered world, something tragic Bruce can't quite manage to look at directly lurking in the boys deep blues, craddles them close regardless of how his own world looks. Of his hands shake. Of how his mind in only just barley there. He cups them close as he hugs the child held up in his arms, offers them saftey, a harbor to rest, to trust that its in better hands— Bruce doesn't know is thats his, if his hand are better. If he won't just ruin this, if he won't break this too— and sets a plan on how to peice them back together.

First, clothes.

Dickie settles far a bit better when his new appendages are covered. Legs and upper half alike drowning in a matching set of black silk pajamas Bruce still miraculously had clean after his many weeks of disregarding anything but picking off enough pieces of food from his microwave dinners not to starve and sleeping his days away. 

The jawstrings are pulled into a massive bow that nearly stretches the entire length of the lads upper thigh, and Bruce tied back to better half of the shirt hes in and rolled up the sleeves and the cuff of the pants and its still far, far, too big. It would be cute, down right heart stoppingly adorable. If not for the eyebags he can see mirrored from his face onto one so much younger. Too young to be suffering what it is that Dick is suffering through. 

He had resisted at first, fussing asnd fighting with Bruce with more energy then he would imagine a child who just spent half an hour shaking with quiet sobs would have. Hissing his displeasure and trying to swip at Bruce with claws that are no longer there— He settles though, when he finds the legs he had hated so much are swallowed up in the fabric. And that the clothe, so flowy around his small frame, looks almost like one unified unit when he hold his legs together.

Bruce tables adressing that for much later. 

Chooses instead to replenish some of that energy.

Bruce places a plate of only somewhat burnt fluffy pancakes topped with the left over berries he found blessedly not rotten infront of the lad, hidding the mess of nearly a bakers dozen of failed attempts to clean up latter behind his back. Gently coaxing Dick's hand to hold the silver fork a half size too big for his mouth into a comfortable grip, watching as the child clumsily slams the fork into the stack all the same. Silver meeting ceramic, berrys falling off and rolling off the plate and counter, soft dough ripped away from itself before being shoved in a small mouth.

Tiny blue drops, dark as a storm ragging over an open ocean, lighten up a fraction. Clouds clear just enough to let a little light shine through.

Its not as good as how Alfred used to make them— nothing Bruce two left, lost even with a recipe, hands could ever even hope— but its something. 

Bruce has no idea what had happened. How long Dickie is to stay with him. How he got his legs. What happened to his parents— did they bring him here? or did Dick come himself, wailing for whatever help he thought Bruce could provide?

All those things rush through his mind and Bruce has no answers, wonders if he ever will. Theres dishes behind him that needs to be clean, trash to be thrown away, showers to be taken, and a whole wide scary world to be taken on one shaky step after another, but right now, the young boy eats.

And thats something.

Chapter Text

  They like to say grief has fazes, like something so hollowing could fallow a schedule, like if you master it well enough it'll simply fade all away like it was never there to begin with. A boss thrown away off screen never to be seen again.

Grief is nothing like that.

Grief, in truth, is a wanting little thing. It grasps and it clings to any pant leg or skirt hem it can get its hands on, any shrivel of love and care it can find it barries itself within and becomes niegh impossible to pry out. Turning things that once burned with a brightness; bitterstweet and stinging. Like a child pressing their fingers into a bruise and pulling each word of where it came from from you. It loves the company. 

Its unpredictable and unfair. Its catches you at the worst times, dragging you deeper into the belly of dispair. It catches you at the best, living your life almost as normal as you were before grief showed up at your doorsteped, soggy and cold, shivering with knowing eyes and the same pain that ran so deep you could feel it with every breath. It shows differently for everyone.

For Bruce, it showed its face in apathy.

He was far more out of it then any child that small and that young should ever be. He felt nothing about vertually anything, he just wanted it all to leave him alone. Wanted the whole world to keep on spinning with out him, to leave him forgetten at the bottom of a lake, smoothed over by the undertow till he eventually broke down to dust and floated off to become part of some beach. It all meant nothing to him. Not school. Not friends. Not even his own well being. It all felt so bland and unfair.

His parents were dead and it was his fault, what right  did he have to care about anything ever again? What bullet gets a second chance? What monster gets to say "sorry" and try again?

Old now, he can see how much this must have killed his loyal butler. How much that man cared for him, loved him, only to have to watch the child he once watch blossom and bloom slowly wither and die under thr guilt placed on his shoulders by himself and smoother. Flickering and blinking out like a dying star. More tired then any child should be, more quiet then the day he was born, words left heavy like led in the back of his mouth, much too weighted not to just swallow back down.

Grief pours emotions out of Dick like a well left to flood.

Living with a mer child and their newly acquired, and quite hated, legs was a rather steep learning curve. One that both time and grief had no intrest in letting Bruce master or even somewhat get the hand of. 

He was tired. They both were. 

Dick was tired of trying to get his flimsy new appendages to cooperate with him. They felt strange and unnatural. Too bendable. Too soft. He missed his scales and the way they'd shimmer in the right glimpse of sunlight, the way his fins would flare out like wings on the birds who soar through the sky as he cut through his own world of blue. These new things- these legs, were nothing more then dead weight. Things that kept him from the water— never mind that the trimmers that would rack his body senseless anytime he cought a glimps of the ocean , never mind the fear and blurry figures he can't quite remember, the faded memory of the last things his parents ever said to to him— that hindered him with every move. 

He hated them.

And at this point, Bruce was starting to hate them too.

For such small things, just barely the length of his own arms, they were a cause of so much strife in each of their lives. Dick hated them for existing and Bruce hated them for the way it made Dick bend towards the horrible urge to hurt himself. Bruce having to stumble overhimself more times then he cares for to catch Dick from slamming hateful fists into the flesh of his thighs and bruising the light tan skin purply blue.

There was this disconnect between the two, the boy and his legs. It was more then Dick not liking them, it was like he couldn't feel them at all. Would rather dragging them around behind him or tug on Bruces legs to be lefted up, the give half the effort needed to learn how to use them in all the walking lessons Bruce tried, and very spectacularly failed, at giving him. The worked— Bruce had checked them over rigurously the first time he lefted Dick to stand and the boy all but flopped over like a noodle cooked for too long. They were healthy. Pefect muscels and ligaments, bones all feeling the way they should, locked into place. They should work, and yet..

"No."

Bruce fights back exhaling out of frustration, like most children, this is the first full word Dick has ever learned. 

Put between a table and his once rather cheerful little friend, the boys back pressed as far into the little nook between the wall and the tv stand. Far from Bruce's grasp, blue bubble swells of tears already edging on the corner of his eyes, and doesn't that just make the man feel like an amalgamation of all the worsts things to walk the earth. He doesn't enjoy any of this either but its necessary. 

He doesn't know what happened, how Dick became.. like this. He doesn't know when Dick's parents are coming back, but he knows that until they do, Dick is going to have to learn how to live the same way other humans do.

(Thers a voice, tiny but so indescribably cruel, that hushed out that Martha and John are never coming back. That their dead and that it, like most things, is somehow, in someway, his fault and its only a matter of time till they find out how and Dick hates him for it. Then, they'll be the same in more then just one way. Sometimes, after a particular rough day of failing to get Dick to stop crying for just one hour, please chum—he lays in bed as his thoughts form into a thing with harsh lips and endless teeth and lets it chip away at him. Eating him hallow from the inside out. Its sick, and its twisted, using someones else tragedy as some sort of fodder for his self flagilation season but he can't help it. 

Its always there, waiting for the moment he screws up another good thing.

He kills it off just before morning dawns. Like a deepest of terrors hidden away in the nighttime's dusk, he refuses to left those thoughts meet the light in fear that if they do, they might become something so real he'd never look away from them. And he just doesn't have the time to spare for it now, not with a child who needs a person to look after them more the Bruce needs to have a break down.)

Bruce crouches down, hating the way standing makes him feel like some bloody jawed wolf looming over a lamb. Hands kept to himself and his eyes tired— he is so tired. He hasn't felt this down trodden in months. Its not the normal type of tired either, its a special sort of worn feeling that settles over his heart stretched too thin after too many nights awake trying to keep Dick's world from complete falling apart—

"Just give it one more go chum" He doesn't bother to hide the pleading desperation in his voice. After so many times of this with no success, Bruce is at a lost for what he can do. Dick needs to know how to walk, Bruce can not carry him around forever. He can't survive like that, neither of them can. 

Unfortunately, the boy is having none of it. Bushy brows furrow down as blue eyes are squeezed  behind clinched shut eyelids, little hands held tight over little ears as Dick shakes his head fast enough Bruce is concerned he might strain something,

"No. NoNoNo-"

"Dickie-"

"No!"

"Ple-"

"NO!" Dick raises his voice over Bruce's, dragging the on syllable out long and loud enough the man can almost feel his ears start to ring until Bruce coincides and lets the boy have all the use of the open air, mouth snapped shut and shoulders sagging under invisible weight. 

"Okay." Bruce scrubs a hand over his face, he's frustrated and on the edge of his rope. Lost with absolutely no clue what todo but one thing is clear, walking is not a battle he is going go win, so he gives up. Dick has already lost so much already, forced into too much already, this is clearly too much too fast. Okay- "We'll just.. have to figure something else out"

What that'll be Bruce is entirely unsure. Something that'll help Dick get around the house and, potentially should he stay here long enough, the town with all its steps, steep hills, and sharp cliffs— Bruce can feel his blood pressure spike already. If Dick does ever make it into town, Bruce will never let him go on his own.

A wheelchair would work, for the most part, but hes got next to no clue where he would find something like that in a remote town like this. Or if its even slighty wheelchair exesssable, Bruce knows his house certainly isn't—which, he'll undoubtedly have todo something about, or be forced to move all his things downstairs and leave his upstairs for dust bunnies and stale air. Then theres the trouble of his furniture, which he'll—

"...Birds" A small hand settling on the jut of Bruce wrist bone pulls him from his thoughts, mind's sprawling plans pushed to the side as his attention snaps up to the round blue eyes staring back at him. Crawled out of his little hiddy hole, Dick's black curls glint an burnt aborn in the afternoon's golden light, the curve of his button nose just barley catching the light along his edge and the under of his eyes are flushed red from all the crying and rubbing they've suffered.

He looks just as worn as Bruce feels, more so even. All to which is his right, poor boy. Bruce feels that same familiar hurt bloom in his chest, swarming his heart as its prone todo.

An impatient tug pulls at him again, brows pulling in as Bruce shakes his mind clear, turns over his hands palm up for Dick to settle his own in and pulls the boy the rest of the way into the light. 

Right.

One step at a time.

"Yeah, okay chum. Lets draw some birds"

Bruce finds a wheelchair suprisingly easy. He was right in assuming it would be niegh impossible to find a place in a small town like this— ones whos shops consist of clothing, food, sweet-treats, booze, and home items at the very most— that sold something like that but he was wrong in assuming locating one would be hard. All it took was a little asking around before an older man called Bruce on the phone just yesterday, saying how he heard about Bruce's predicament and was near brought to tears over it, told him that he had a chair left from his late wife that was all his waiting in town the next time he dropped by. 

Small towns, Bruce supposed, are resourcful in their own ways.

After a nearly two months on having to carry Dick around the house— even despite the boy's instance that he can just crawl around, Bruce could hardly look at him dragging his legs behind him for more then a few moments before he caves and just picks the boy up, hiking him on his hip and bringing him to where ever he wants to go. Dick hates it. Hates having to ask, hates not just being to go free; a trapped bird banging against the golden wires of his cage— so Bruce finally decides he ought todo what he planned to a month or so ago. 

Hes held of, mostly he thinks, because he hoped he wouldn't haft to– still hopes he wont haft to. Even as he tugs an old college hoodie over Dicks head, ignore his squirming and hissing as he does so, and folds up the legs of the bright red plaid sleeping pants the boy picked out as his favorite, he hopes that he'll look out the window in the kitchen and they'll be there. Waiting for them, sun shinning down on the curly black hair and bright blues glistening with the ocean at their backs. That they'll call for them in those sing songy voices of theirs and it'll all be set back to right.

He hopes that they'll come back and Dick will have his family again. That they'll come back with half a clue with what todo about this leg situation. He looks at the sea and every low tide hides a shadowy body, every lap of sea foam against sandy white beach, a pause before a reveal. He keeps waiting. Keeps watching. 

Nothing ever happens. 

Its been nearly two months and as much as Bruce trys to keep the boy distracted, Dick knows. They both do. The chance their coming back withers each time the sun slips away past the horizon and the moon steps in with sorry eyes, the clock they can both hear tiking away and its only a matter of it untill the times runs out and theres nothing. They can't wait forever, standing still in place while the world goes by. It wont let them, never has, and Bruce has already put this off longer then he should have. 

He casts one last glance at the sea, Dick clung to his side as they crest the hill that keeps his secluded area of the beach from the sprawling mess of the seatown proper, waits for a baited breath as the tides push in before rushing out. It would be a perfect  moment— any would be, he'll take any moment— like something you would see in the movies.

No ones waiting when the waves drag out, pulling with it a layer of sand and leaving behind seashells and seaweed in trade, and in the next breath, their rushing in once more. Sunlight still ripping through the waves, wind still brushing against the trees, and seagulls screaming in the air as the soar past. Time ticks forward. 

Bruce puts one foot infront of the other and continues he way into town.