Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

It’s a gorgeous day.  Bright sunshine, the kind of fluffy clouds that look like cotton balls, mild winds.  A perfect day to get some observations done.  His boat’s handling great, the harbor’s quiet, and there isn’t a ship in sight when Dick kills the engine along the stretch of empty ocean north of Bludhaven.

The Blood Cliffs, named for both their red color and a pun on Bludhaven, is a tourist attraction for divers.  Located about thirty feet under the sea, the dark red rock formation abruptly drops to nothingness a mile from shore, and is riddled with several caves.  They’re also the focus of Dick’s post-doctoral research, and a bunch of bad storms and technical trouble delayed his trip to get samples of the stone.

But here he is, diving suit on, voice recorder waiting on deck, anchor line hooked and net and tools in place to chisel out some rock specimens.  There are several urban legends surrounding the Blood Cliffs, and many of them say that the stones are magic.  Certainly the waters north of Bludhaven shift very quickly into wild ocean.

Dick was fascinated the very first time he stumbled upon the legends and is invested in teasing out its secrets.  Magic or curses—some say the cliffs extract a blood price, and there have certainly been several suspicious deaths around here—or pure human evil, Dick’s planning to get to the bottom of it.

He double-checks his oxygen tank, and dives into the water.

The water is still chilly and Dick shudders as he descends, swimming faster to get his blood pumping.   He keeps the net clipped to the line as he touches down on dark red rock, splaying a hand against the jagged stone.

Above ground, the rocks look brighter, more orangey than true red, but under the water they look exceedingly dark.  Less so the color of fresh blood and more like coagulated blood, patches of an almost burnt black amid the red stone.  Dick feels his fingers tremble where they touch the stone, a deeper vibration than what he felt when he studied the aboveground samples.

That’s magic, alright.

He swims forward, heading for the sharp drop-off that gave the Blood Cliffs their name.  It’ll be easier to extract some samples from there, as well as pose the least risk magically if there’s truly something sentient in the stone.  Boundaries are fluid spaces and a Thief’s Curse will ruin half his planned tests.

Dick pulls out his malometer and checks the readings.  It’s hovering at about the level for wild ocean—definitely spiteful, but not unusual.  A distinction that makes his work dangerous instead of incredibly foolish, as Barbara noted waspishly.  Dick tucks away the malometer, checks his compass to make sure he’s in the right place, and slowly drifts over the edge of the Blood Cliffs.

It isn’t his first time diving here, but the sight of the ocean floor dropping away to a dark abyss is always exceedingly spine-chilling.  According to Bludhaven maps, the city’s waters extend another ten miles to include shipping lanes, but Dick can feel the coldness of wild ocean pressing against him.  The pressure of an ever-hungry chasm of chaos that no creature has ever been able to tame.

Dick lets the shudder roll down his spine before he turns back to the cliff.  Spotting a likely spur of rock, he removes his chisel and hammer before feeling for a seam in the rock.  Once he finds a deep enough groove, he braces the chisel inside.

Swinging a hammer underwater is always a fun experience.

Dick can feel the muffled vibrations in the rock, his surroundings eerily quiet.  The shoal of fish that was milling around has darted away, no doubt scared off.  The groove’s deeper than Dick thought it was, and it only takes a few more taps to break off a chunk of rock double the size of his fist.

Success.

Dick catches it before it can sink, and holds his breath.  Nothing tries to attack him.  Another check on the malometer shows a slight increase in malaise, but no major spike.  Dick exhales and twists to look for his net—he should take a few more samples, just to be safe—

His line jerks, hard and violent, sending Dick skidding across the red stone.  He can see his net, still attached to his line, and it’s apparent that something else has found it first.

The net’s small, built to carry specimens, but it’s also durable, as the creature thrashing inside it has no doubt discovered.  Another jerk travels through the line and Dick pulls on it harshly to propel himself closer.

He registers the tail first, nearly as long as his legs and patterned with alternating orange and black scales, and the torso—the human torso—second.  The furious hissing makes sense in context and Dick keeps a wary distance from the angry mer as he tries to figure out what happened.

Clearly the mer—merling, an adult mer would be twice the size of Dick—got itself stuck in the netting somehow, and all its furious writhing is only entangling it further.  Dick drifts a little closer and waves a hand to try and catch its attention.

The merling stills for one stretching second, a blue eye peeking out from dark hair, before it lunges.

Dick hastily backpedals, wincing as the merling succeeds in trapping itself further in the netting, bound and refusing to calm down.  That’s not good.  They keep making screeching hisses and Dick slowly swims a circle around them as he tries to find a way to free the poor thing.

Unfortunately, the merling is devoting more attention to following Dick than trying to extricate itself, huffing and hissing and trying very hard to make itself seem scary.  It would’ve been cute, if adolescent mers aren’t still powerful enough to shatter bone with their strong tails.

Okay, the first step is to untie himself from this mess.  Dick unhooks his anchor line before swimming above the net and cutting the line there as well, inwardly mourning the loss of good rope.  Next is figuring out how to cut the merling free.

They stop hissing when they see him approaching again, wide eyes focused on the knife in his hands.  Instead, they make a series of high-pitched keening noises, struggling to get away from him.  Dick winces but continues forward, free hand held open, in the hopes that the merling will let him get to the net.

Nope.  The merling is not having it.  They feign acquiescence, waiting until Dick drifts into reach, before exploding into a frenzy of movement.  The tail clips Dick’s side—it feels like he’s been slammed into a wall—as the merling writhes furiously, making increasingly harsher hisses.

But a second attack doesn’t come and Dick warily uncurls, checking to make sure he’s still in one piece.  The merling’s managed to get its tail caught in the free rope, forcing it behind its back and pinning it completely.  The noises they’re making sound increasingly desperate and Dick’s attempt at clicking his tongue doesn’t soothe them.

Better to free them first.  Ignoring the way the merling trembles, Dick reaches out and slowly curls his fingers around the stretch of netting he can reach.  He isn’t going to bother trying to figure out how to untangle it, he just sets his knife to the netting and begins to saw.

His knife’s sharp, but it’s still slow going—he has to pin each twined section of netting individually, has to carefully slip the knife to not poke the still-struggling merling, and saw outwards to snap the tie.  And then move on to the next one, and the next one, and the next one, and Dick has no idea what the merling’s done but he’s cut through a foot of netting and they still aren’t free.

Dick takes a deep breath and winces when it filters through salty.  So much for a peaceful day conducting research.

The merling abruptly makes a high-pitched trill and Dick looks up, afraid that he’s accidentally hurt them.  And then freezes.

That is an adult mer.

Tail the length of a car, bright orange splotches on pitch-black scales, a torso broad and firm, hands tipped with claws and a mouth full of razor-sharp teeth.  Dick’s gaze flits over the scarred, milky eye and its glaring blue counterpart and the silver-white hair before settling on the murderous expression.

Fuck.

He doesn’t need to match the scale patterns to know that the mers are from the same pod.  Or the merling’s plaintive trills to understand that he’s committed the fatal mistake of getting between a merling and its parent.

Dick swallows—his tongue tastes curiously like seawater—and stares at the older mer.  The older mer glares back, gills flaring, swimming in a slow, sinuous circle around Dick and the trapped merling.  His gaze promises a slow, tortuous death.

Dick tries to calculate his options.

His best one is probably swimming as far and as fast as he can.  The mer will tend to his child first and Dick can make a break for it in the distraction.  There are two problems with that, though—first, mer claws aren’t designed to cut through netting, nor to hold human knives, and second, attempting to outswim a mer is a doomed proposition.

Dick holds out a hand, palm open, and hopes the mer understands he’s trying to help.  The mer makes a loud, hissing sound and Dick hastily draws his hand back before he loses a finger.

This is not going to end well.

Dread settling in his stomach as his throat closes up, Dick works faster at sawing through the netting.  The adult mer continues his tight circles, not getting any closer—either because he realizes what Dick’s doing or because he’s leery of the knife—but his presence still a clear threat.  Dick’s lungs are tight with barely suppressed panic that doesn’t get any better when he takes a breath and chokes on seawater.

What the hell?

Check the tank is his first, ingrained reaction and Dick does, twisting to look over his shoulder and—shit.  The tank’s dented—probably from the moment the merling’s tail hit him—and Dick’s unknowingly burned through a drastically limited oxygen supply.

It’s funny how the prospect of no oxygen lends itself to hyperventilating.

Dick glances up, the brightness of the surface shining nearly twenty feet above him, and back at the adult mer angrily circling around him, trapping him in place.  And then at the merling, no longer struggling but making weak trills as they tremble.

His chest is tight.  It’s beginning to burn.

Dick takes a slow, careful breath, as deep as he can get before his whole mouth fills with seawater, and then yanks the mask and tank off, letting both fall to the ocean floor.  Spitting out the seawater and ignoring the mental countdown in his head and the angry adult mer, he focuses on the netting.

Hold.  Cut.   Snap.  Hold.  Cut.  Snap.  Hold.  Carefully, close to its gills.  Cut slowly.  Snap.  Hold.  Cut.  Snap.  Hold.  Cut.  Snap.

Dick is starting to get lightheaded.  His lungs are definitely burning now, and there are dark spots dancing in his vision.

Just a few more.  Hold.  Cut.  Snap.  Hold.  Cut.  Snap.  Grab the edges of the netting and pull them apart, come on, harder, until the hole’s big enough.

The merling wriggles its way out in a forceful lunge, ignoring Dick entirely to shoot straight for its father.  Dick watches the adult mer catch the merling and draw them closer, trilling to them and brushing a frantic hand over its scales.

Dick exhales, and the burning in his lungs diminishes.  His chest is tight, like someone’s squeezing it, an iron band of pressure that gets worse and worse and worse.  The merrily dancing sunlight is just twenty feet away.

Dick stretches out a hand to the surface.  It feels so close.  He tries to kick up and the darkness closes over him.

Grant is here, Grant is safe, Grant is unhurt—Slade manages to detach himself from his kid long enough to check over the merling and make sure there are no unexpected wounds as Grant keeps making trilling sobs, wriggling fiercely to latch back on.

He was terrified out of his depth-damned mind from the very first moment he heard Grant’s piercing call for help.

Swimming frantically to his child only to discover him trapped in a net and at the mercy of a human—Slade just barely managed to cling to his self-control to avoid rushing in and making the situation worse.  The human had a blade near his kid, and Slade couldn’t fillet him with Grant in the crossfire, and the helplessness nearly destroyed him.

:You’re okay: Slade tells him, pressing his cheek to the merling’s dark hair.  He can feel his heart begin to settle.  :Shh, you’re okay.:

Grant clings to him in a way he hasn’t since he was a fry.  Slade knows that Grant’s becoming more rebellious as he grows up, snarling and fighting in the way of adolescent mers everywhere, but he didn’t expect Grant to actually sneak away when Slade was hunting.  And straight into a human trap.

Slade jerks his head up, suddenly aware that in his fretting over Grant, he lost track of the human.  What if there’s more than one, what if they have sharper blades, or the long, barbed ones they use to drag mers out of water and onto land, what if Grant is just bait—

The human hasn’t gone anywhere.  The human hasn’t moved, its suit a dark black-and-blue splotch in the middle of the waves.  Part of it—a metal box and the tube that attaches to its face—are on the rock several feet below.

Slade is pretty sure that tube is what lets humans breathe underwater.

The human is still, limbs drifting unconsciously, head tilted towards the surface.  Eyes closed.  There are no air bubbles.  The torn remnants of the netting hung in the air between them.

No.  Not torn.  Slade swims closer and snatches the closest edge of the netting to examine it.  It’s cut, with something cleanly sharp.  Slade looks back at the human.

The blade is out of its limp fingers, sinking slowly to the ocean floor.

No other humans around.  No traces of magic or malice.  And the way the human held open an empty hand, like some kind of inane joke—

:Dad?: Grant hiccups, half-turned in his arms.  :Why isn’t the human moving?:

Slade curses.

:Stay here: Slade emphasizes sternly, detaching himself from Grant and swimming to the human.  He’s still cautious of a trick but the human doesn’t even twitch when he’s grabbed, when Slade grasps its arm with a force enough to make its bones creak.

Not a trick.  At least, not a live one.

Slade seals his mouth over the human’s and blows out air, but there’s water in the human’s mouth and presumably in its lungs and that meant that the human is already drowning.  Slade curses again, and pulls the stupid-fragile-air-breathing creature to the water’s surface.

The human doesn’t start breathing when they breach the surface, and in the brightness Slade can see the pallor of its soft skin turning grayer and grayer.  Slade looks around for—there.  The boat will do, it looks empty and presumably belongs to the human in question.

Slade settles the human on the part that slopes down towards the water, sets his hands above the human’s lungs, and presses.

Something cracks inside.  He presses again, uncaring, again and again, until he feels a spasm below his fingers and lets go in time for the human to start coughing and choking and retching.  He flails wildly, wheezing as he tries to curl over or get up, Slade can’t quite tell, and expels a handful’s worth of water in shuddering gasps.

“Is he dying?” Grant lisps, having disobeyed him and now curiously peering at the boat from Slade’s side.  “Why’s he shaking so much?”

“I told you to stay below,” Slade growls.  “It’s dangerous on the surface.”

“There’s no one here,” Grant says, unimpressed, and Slade gives up.  The human finally stopped making choking noises and is now lying on its side, shivering violently.  “Do you think he needs water?”

Slade raises a hand to cuff him.

“Ow,” Grant looks injured.  “What was that for?”

“Humans don’t belong in water,” Slade snaps, crossing his arms.  “Isn’t that right, human?”

The human, who’s weakly trying to push itself up on one arm, freezes.  He stares at them, blue eyes wide, face young, still wracked with shudders.  Its breaths are whistling and too fast and Slade darts a little closer to see if there’s a problem.

The human stops breathing altogether.

Slade squints at him.  “Don’t do that,” he says, poking the human in the chest—careful not to puncture skin—and watching as the human curls in on itself with a wounded noise.  At least he’s breathing again.

“I—I’m s—sorry,” the human stutters, words nearly indecipherable.  Slade tilts his head and the human scrabbles against the boat to pull itself a little further up.  “I didn’t mean to—” he catches sight of Grant and directs his words at the kid—“I didn’t take proper care of my net.  I’m sorry you got s—stuck.”  The shivering hasn’t stopped.  “I’m sorry,” the human repeats, this time to Slade.

“Are you a poacher?” Slade demands.  The boat’s devoid of weapons, but the human had a blade.

“No?” the human looks confused.  “I’m a researcher.  I—ah, I study rocks.”  The human waves a vague hand at the ocean.  “The net was to transport the rocks.”

Hmm.  It isn’t outrageously a lie, but it sure is convenient.  Slade scowls, and the human’s breathing promptly stutters again.

“If I find out you’re lying, human,” Slade says, baring his teeth, “I will hunt you down and peel the flesh from your bones, slice by slice, until your screams die and your heart gives out.”

The human definitely isn’t breathing now.

“Do you understand?”

The human nods very quickly.

“Good,” Slade growls, low and deep, and sinks below the waves.  He has to grab Grant and pull him down too.

Dick stares up at the canopy of his boat and focuses on taking steady breaths.  His chest aches, the soreness of a giant, developing bruise contrasting with licks of fire from definitely-cracked-maybe-broken ribs.  His arm’s sore too, though he doesn’t know why, and his throat feels like he’s swallowed sandpaper.

Altogether, it’s far more excitement than Dick anticipated when he headed out in the morning.  He wants to write a sternly worded letter for whoever failed to register or warn that there are mers this close to Bludhaven’s shore.  And also perhaps a prayer of thanks to whatever deity helped him not get eaten.

A slightly hysterical giggle bursts painfully from his chest.  He managed to survive an encounter with an adult mer.  The mer’s chilling threat definitely turned Dick’s blood to ice, but he doesn’t miss that the mer brought him back to the boat.

What’s that saying?  No good deed goes unpunished?  Dick has the injuries to back it up.

He exhales, wincing, and tries to pull together the willpower to get up and head back to shore.  This data-gathering mission is clearly a bust, Dick is not getting back into the water with a mer pod close by, and Barbara will have his head if he doesn’t go get his lungs checked out.  Secondary drowning has nothing on his boss.

Before he can move, the boat itself rocks, a sudden jolt like it hit something.  Or like something hit it.

Dick jerks up in a motion acutely painful, and by the time he can breathe without the urge to scream, the waters around him are empty and calm.  The boat hasn’t moved from its original location, and there’s nothing moving in sight.  Especially not orange-and-black scales.

The boat, however, is more occupied than it was a few minutes ago.  Dick’s oxygen tank apparatus is sitting on the deck, as well as his knife, and finally, a hunk of bright red rock twice the size of his fist.

Dick skims his hands over all of it, verifying that it is in fact his, and checking the malometer to make sure none of it is cursed.

“Thank you,” he says out loud after the verification, half unable to believe it.

The ocean declines to answer.

Chapter Text

The annoying thing about research is how answering one question spawns a dozen others.  Dick’s tests concluded the same thing that was already known about the rich red stone that comprises the Blood Cliffs—it has no special intrinsic magical properties.  At least, once it’s taken out of the water.

Given the limited usefulness and large amounts of risk involved in conducting magical tests underwater so close to wild ocean, there’s very little way to observe the stone in its natural state.  At least until one of his colleagues pointed out that he can study the rocks where they jut out of the water.

Bludhaven’s north shore is rocky and treacherous, and most of it isn’t made of the same red stone, but about five miles north of the city, there’s a stretch where the Blood Cliffs rise up to meet the ocean surface.  The area is strictly off-limits for swimming, the stones sharp and the currents powerful and tide deceptively dangerous.

At low tide—like right now as Dick eases into the water, his car parked off the road and his gear strapped on—the rock outcropping extends up to five feet above the water’s surface.  At high tide, the entire thing would be underwater—in a storm surge, the road itself gets flooded.

Practically speaking, he isn’t supposed to be here.  He hasn’t told anyone where he’s going because they’d all try to talk him out of it.  Barbara only didn’t scrap his entire research plan because he swore to her he wouldn’t go back out until the Coast Guard does an official survey to see if the mer pod is still there. This part of the ocean is dangerous, regardless of whether or not he has a permit to be out in the water.

But you never get anywhere in life without taking a few risks, a truth Dick learned at his advisor’s side.  Sure, Bruce might not be the most careful scientist out there, but he definitely gets results.  Careful science is an oxymoron anyway.

Besides, it’s low tide, it’ll be hours before the tide’s at dangerous levels, and it’s a bright, sunny day without much wind.  Dick is planning for a couple hours of observations and a slew of tests and this time, nothing will go wrong.

Dick reaches the edge of the rock outcropping and slowly circles it, looking for a good place to pull himself up.  A lot of the rock is jagged and Dick is careful not to brace against any sharp edges of stone.  But once he’s on the rocks, his path is steadier and Dick picks his way across the uneven stone until he makes it to a likely spot.

Reasonably flat, shaded from the sun, and mostly dry.  A good place to start.

For a while, his experiments run smoothly.  Dick’s getting better magical readings off the stone than the inert one back in his lab.  He’ll have to do more tests and cross-reference, but it’s apparent that the Blood Cliffs meet the criteria to be classified as sentient.  Which means they’ll fall under the Sentience Conservation Act and he’ll be free to do more research.

It doesn’t, however, explain why horrible things keep happening around here.  Dick hasn’t gotten a reading of unusual malice off the stone even once, so it isn’t trying to curse first and ask questions never.  But there’s no pattern among the people who’ve vanished here, and if Dick actually breaking the stone wasn’t enough to raise its ire, he doubts that anything random divers or beachgoers could do would qualify.

It could be a curse Dick has yet to identify, but Bruce taught him the importance of exploring alternative hypotheses.  The mer pod, Dick dismisses—mer pods are very visible and besides, he wasn’t been killed by the only mers he’s encountered in these waters.  Despite provocation.  He also hasn’t run into any other type of murderous sea creature.

Which leaves…humans.

Dick wrinkles his nose as he starts his last set of tests.  Bludhaven’s known for its corruption, but it seems like they’re really trying to turn it around.  And the Blood Cliffs are north of Bludhaven, up-current, any magical spillover or dead bodies shouldn’t have drifted here.

The closest manmade structure to the Blood Cliffs is the Blockbuster Resort and Casino.  Dick looks towards shore, towards the thicket of trees past the road that conceal any view of the property.  He’s never been to Blockbuster before, and he hasn’t heard good things about the place either.  Apparently the man who runs it is one of the Bludhaven’s biggest crime bosses.

He knows there’s a private beach somewhere nearby, Blockbuster tourist boats are always out in force in the summer, and if that beach is being used for more unsavory activities…

No.  He’s a scientist, not a detective.  He needs to focus on his research, not on crimes that may or may not be happening.  Gods, he really is turning into his former advisor.

“At least I can prove you’re sentient,” Dick pats the closest rock and turns to finish up his observations.  Once all his gear’s packed back into his suit, Dick stretches up—the water level is now just below his knees—and takes a moment to bask in the dying sunlight.

The water around him shines a deep blood red and the effect is striking, especially as the sun sets.  The closest ships are smudges on the horizon and the tiniest hint of a wind tugs at his salt-sticky hair.  He takes a deep breath of the fresh ocean breeze, not looking forward to going back to the city.

His reverie is interrupted by a distant shriek.

Dick immediately whirls around, staring at the shore.  The rocks are empty, as is the road—Dick’s car is where he left it, and Dick can see no one else around.  He turns in a slow circle to scan the water and finds no trace of movement or person.

He shivers.  Just the chill.  That’s all.

It’s probably a bird.  Or the wind whistling oddly through the trees.  Either way, the water is above his knees now and the sun is starting to set, which means it’s past time to get out of here.  Dick clambers over the rocks, sacrificing caution for speed as his stomach churns unpleasantly, and boosts himself over the ridge.  The rocks scrape against his ungloved palm with a bright flash of pain.

Dick ignores the stinging scrape as he slides down the ridge, hopping across the remaining rocks.  The water is now splashing thigh-high and it’s getting difficult to see where the dark stone ends and the ocean starts—

He misses the next step and his heart skips a beat.

Dick plunges down further than expected, his right foot sliding into a hollow between three rocks, wedging firmly inside with the force of his weight.  He lets his knee crumple instead of trying to keep his balance and flails wildly in the water before managing to get his left foot situated on solid stone to keep him above the surface.  The water is chest high in his new, awkward position.

He tries to pull his foot out and hastily breaks off when his ankle makes a sharp, protesting creak.

Okay.  Just a slight mishap.  Dick forces himself to take a deep breath and hunts for his flashlight.  The salt is stinging fiercely in the scrape on his hand—he curls it tightly into a fist as he switches the flashlight on to illuminate the shadows underneath the water.

His foot is wedged so deeply he can’t make all of it out.  It’s strange that he managed to fall so deep and the churn of unease grows higher.  His heart is beating loud enough that he can hear it in his ears.  Dick takes out his malometer, but the level is the same.

“I’m sorry?” Dick tries out loud, tugging at his foot more gently.  “I apologize if I hurt you, it wasn’t my intention.”  Nothing.  “Do you need something from me?”

Dick looks at his hand, a pale pink line against his skin.  If the Blood Cliffs is intent on exacting a price, surely the blood would’ve been enough.

“Can I leave?” Dick asks, tugging harder at his ankle.  “Please?”

No answer.

Dick swallows and pushes hard at the rocks.  To his surprise, the one on the right shifts—it’s loose.

It’s nothing magical at all.  Dick just stepped wrong.  Taking a deep breath and letting it out slowly, Dick feels his heart rate slowly return to normal.  He needs to get a grip.  The ocean isn’t out to eat him.

He crouches as solidly as he can and tests the rock’s range of motion—the whole rock is loose, a chunk about half the size of him, he estimates, but it’s pinned by the other rocks around it.  When Dick slipped, his foot pushed the rock to the barest inch of give it has.  Unfortunately, it seems to have also settled back into its original position, trapping his ankle in place.

“Come on,” Dick grunts, pushing at the rock, “if I got my foot in, surely I can get it out—” the rock shifts in place—and squeezes his foot tight, forcing Dick to immediately stop pushing.

Dick swallows.  His foot’s pulsing in irregular waves now, hot and throbbing.  He very slowly flexes it, and exhales.  Nothing broken, thankfully, but Dick’s keenly aware of how little space he has to maneuver.

He tries to pull the rock towards him instead, but that just causes the stone to grind against his ankle and Dick breaks that off too.  The problem is that the rock’s on a pivot, and Dick’s ankle is trapped on the wrong side.  No matter which way he twists, he won’t be able to get his foot out.

What he needs is something to lift the rock out entirely, or perhaps split it to free up more space.  Dick tries to take a deep breath to calm down and think, and ends up spluttering when an unexpected wave smacks him in the face.

The tide’s getting higher.

Dick didn’t bring his cellphone with him, or a flare, which in hindsight is pretty stupid even though he’s barely fifty feet from his car.  There’s no one in sight, and the road is rarely traversed outside of tourists.  He casts a desperate glance at the water, a last-ditch hope for a boat he can hail, but there’s nothing in sight.

His heart twists inside his chest.  No.  He has to calm down.  He has to think.  There has to be a way out of this, if only he—the last vestiges of sunlight glitter oddly under the water, catching his attention and—that’s a face.

Dick’s first thought is a wave of relief.  Help.  He can get free—and then his brain catches all the way up, scanning down a human face into a human torso covered by scales in a very familiar pattern.  That dancing orange light isn’t the sun.  Relief stutters, some ancient instinct telling him to flee, but Dick has nowhere to go as the young mer gets closer.

The merling isn’t baring its teeth, or hissing, its face is almost…curious?  He darts closer, to the edge of the rocks, and looks at him quizzically.

“I, uh, I’m stuck,” Dick admits.  The irony’s on point, at least.

The merling pushes over the edge of the rocks and glides forward.  Stop, it’s dangerous, Dick almost says, like the mer can’t see underwater, doesn’t know precisely where the rocks are.  Another head pops up a little distance away—a younger face, blond curls, but the same orange-and-black scales.  He waves shyly at Dick.  Dick waves back and scans the waves for any sign of the big one.

Having a mer twice the size of him looming over him while he gasped for breath was terrifying enough the first time, Dick has absolutely no desire to repeat the experience.  The merling swims closer, through water lapping at Dick’s neck, and latches onto his leg.

Dick goes still.

Clawed fingers poke at the stone trapping his foot and curl experimentally around his leg.  “I tried to get it out,” Dick says slowly.  “It’s—ah—” the merling is yanking at his leg—“stop, that’s not going to work!”

The only way out is to shift the rock out of the way.  Thankfully, it seems like the merling realizes that too, because the tugging stops.  There’s an expression that’s distinctively a pout on the merling’s face as he bares his teeth at the rock.

“Look, thank you for trying to help,” Dick gentles his voice, darting another glance to check for the adult mer, “but I think it’s better if you called a boat or someone to help me out.”

The blond merling blinks at him, silent.  The dark-haired one pops his head out, making a curious low hiss, and says in a lisp that shows he hasn’t entirely gotten used to human speech, “Don’t worry, I’ll free you!”

Dick hisses when the merling begins testing the rock.  He makes a sharper sound as the rock teeters inward, but it swiftly stops moving.

“I told you, it won’t help,” Dick says as calmly as he can manage.  He’s beginning to get tired, and the tide will soon rise to over his head.  He needs to get free sooner rather than later, and preferably before the merlings’ parent shows up.  “Why don’t you call for—”

The rock moves again, as though the merling is trying to slide it out of place.  Unfortunately, Dick’s foot is in the way.

“No,” Dick hisses sharply.  “Stop—stop, it isn’t working—stop!”

The merling doesn’t stop.  The pressure grows worse, Dick’s ankle creaking, and he ducks down to push away the merling as he struggles.

“No, it’s not working, stop it—stop it—please—please—”

The pressure reaches intolerable. The rock continues grinding.  The merling’s grip tightens.

And Dick screams as his ankle snaps.

Humans really are fragile.  Grant clutches the shuddering form, careful to make sure its head is above water.  He remembers from last time that humans need air.  What ridiculousness.  And they keep insisting on going into the water anyway.

:What are you doing?: Joey squeaks, swimming a little closer even though Grant told him to stay back.  He hasn’t forgotten the human’s knife.  :Why is he shaking like that?:

The human is clutching Grant with weak fingers, quietly sobbing.  Grant swum them away from the rock outcropping—the bloodstone is old magic, and Dad warned them away from playing with it—but he doesn’t know what to do next.  He can’t just take the human back to their pod.  Can he?

:Grant: comes the furious hiss traveling through the water.  Oops.  :What do you think you’re doing?:

Grant turns in time to catch sight of Dad zipping towards him.  Joey hastily swims further away from Grant—so now he decides to listen, the little barnacle—and Dad’s expression resolves into a thunderous glower as he fixates on the human.

:Let the human go.:  Dad sounds as angry as he was when they got back after the net incident.  Grant remembers the extensive lecture he got on the dangers of running away.  Well, this time Grant didn’t run away, but it’s possible that he and Joey ventured slightly closer to shore than they’re supposed to in the course of their hunt.

:He was stuck: Grant protests.  :I didn’t do anything!:

:Grant: Dad’s eye flash.  :Let.  Him.  Go.:

Grant scrunches up his face but does as he’s told.  The human gasps, spluttering as he dips below the water line, before hastily flailing its arms to stay above water.  Dad yanks Grant away before breaching the surface and Grant pops up behind him, curious.  Joey darts closer as well.

“You,” Dad hisses, clearly recognizing the human as the same one whose net Grant got stuck in a couple months ago.  “What are you doing here?”

“I was just—” the human waves a hand at the rock outcropping before hastily resuming its flailing.  Huh.  Grant thought that human swimmers are at least passable, but this one seems intent on proving its whole species wrong.  “Doing research.  I got stuck.  And your—um.  He freed me.”  The human points in Grant’s direction.

Dad’s expression, turned towards Grant, is a very clear ‘wait till we get home’.  Grant gulps.

“Perhaps you should consider staying out of these waters,” Dad says darkly.  “Or the next misfortune that befalls you may be more…lethal.”

The human swallows, looking very pale.

“Leave,” Dad growls, low and deep, and the human immediately twists to follow the order, flailing its arms in a semblance of strokes to head towards shore.  Dad waits until the human is a good fifteen feet away before whirling on Grant.

:What: he hisses as they descend below the water, :were you thinking, Grant?  Getting close to a human?  Getting this close to shore?  I asked you to watch Joey and instead you brought him along—:

:The human was stuck: Grant argues back, crossing his arms.  :He freed me when I got stuck—:

:He was the reason you got stuck!: Dad says furiously.

:And you saved him last time—:

:That’s different: Dad snaps.  :I’m an adult.  You are not.  You—:

:The human: Joey interrupts the raging argument.  :He stopped.:  Both Grant and Dad twist around to see.

The human hasn’t made it much further.  He’s drifting fully underwater, one hand clawing at the leg that was trapped, sinking without doing any of the flappy maneuvers humans have to do to stay afloat.  Now that Grant’s looking at it, the legs don’t match.  One of them is twisted at a sharp angle.

Dad makes a low, grinding sound.  :You both, stay: he demands, before propelling himself to the human’s side with one powerful push of his tail.

:He’s a bad swimmer: Joey notes as they watch the human continue to sink.

:You have no idea: Grant agrees.

Dick pushes burning arms to get him to the surface again and takes a gasp of fresh air.  His ankle is killing him, exploding in a burst of agony when he accidentally kicked out with it, and now his eyes are blurry and his breaths are too fast and the stabbing pain is the only thing he can think about.

Shore isn’t far.  About the length of a swimming pool away.  Dick just has to get himself that far—and then drag himself up over the rocks, across the road, and to his car—

His brief reprieve is abruptly interrupted by cold, clawed hands settling on his arm and gripping tight.  Dick twists immediately, heart leaping into his throat, and is face-to-face with the adult mer’s extremely displeased expression.

Oh, crap, some part of Dick murmurs faintly.

“Can you not swim?” the mer demands, looking fed up.  Dick feels a ping of irritation.  It isn’t his fault he keeps stumbling over the mer’s pod, he’s just trying to do research.

“I can swim,” Dick retorts, “I just hurt my foot.”  The mer doesn’t look impressed with the explanation.  “Look, I’m trying to get back to shore.”

The mer makes a snorting noise and mutters something about useless humans.  Dick opens his mouth, perhaps unwisely, to retort—he isn’t useless—but has to close it hastily when the mer yanks him forward.

It doesn’t even take a full beat of that powerful tail before they’re right next to the rocks.  Dick stares down, through the water, at orange-and-black scales that glitter darkly in the dying light, and back up, at the mer that dwarfs him completely.

“There,” the mer says, baring its teeth.  “Land.  And stay on it.”  He pulls Dick’s hand to the nearest rock, as though doubting his ability to do even that much, and glares until Dick pulls himself out of the water.

It’s slow-going to get back to the road.  Dick is exhausted and shivering and his ankle is a constant throbbing of pain as he drags himself across the rocks.  By the time he reaches the asphalt, he’s entirely spent.  He can’t drive back to Bludhaven, he has to call someone, and he can already hear Barbara’s outraged lecture.

When he turns back, the mer is still there, watching him.  “Thank you,” Dick says, because his parents taught him manners, even to incredibly powerful and viciously dangerous sea creatures that keep threatening to murder him.

The mer just narrows its eye before he sinks below the waves.

Chapter Text

If anyone knew what he’s doing right now, they wouldn’t be happy.  Dick just got the cast off, received a whole bunch of instructions to take it easy, and instead he’s perched in a tree inside the Blockbuster Resort and Casino.

He used the downtime to write up his report on the Blood Cliffs—there was enough preliminary data to validate the need for a more comprehensive exam on the Blood Cliffs under the Sentience Conservation Act.  Unfortunately, he also heard through the grapevine that the push wasn’t going to get very far in Bludhaven’s notoriously corrupt bureaucracy.  What sparked his interest, however, was the mention of a familiar name in connection to the case—Roland Desmond, crime boss and owner of the Blockbuster Resort and Casino.

Investigate coincidences, he can hear Bruce’s voice in his head, and often there’s a pattern.

Why would Desmond block the relabeling?  Unless there’s something that further investigation of the Blood Cliffs would turn up that would directly impact him.

Barbara, upon hearing his theory, told him to stop being an amateur detective and focus on his research.  Amy, a detective with the BPD that Dick met after intervening in a mugging, told him that if he creates another paperwork disaster for her, she’ll arrest him herself.  Bruce was distracted when Dick called—his new grad student is apparently prone to testing things out via explosions—but definitely agreed with Dick that it seems suspicious.

All three told Dick to be careful.

Dick is being careful.  He’s dressed in dark clothes, he waited until dusk, and he used his knowledge of carnival entrances to sidle through a staff door and into an inconspicuous location to wait for dark.  He can admit that this is not what any of them meant by be careful, but Dick has historically never been able to let things lie and he isn’t going to start now.

He shifts slightly in position and waits as the night grows darker and darker and a few lights switch on the distance.  No one comes to Bludhaven in the off-season and several parts of the resort are closed, leaving the place nice and dark for Dick to do some poking around.

Dick has just decided to climb down when bobbing flashlights halt him.  Staying in place, hidden by the foliage, Dick watches a couple of night guards approach, clearly doing a practiced patrol.

“—get away from the aquarium,” one of them says, walking along the path.  “Kind of creepy, to be honest.”

“Yeah, boss didn’t like that there was a mer pod in the waters.”  Dick freezes.  The mers.  Did they have something to do with this too?  “I agree with you, all that hissing is off-putting.”

“Now that we have one of ‘em, we can catch the rest soon.”  Dick’s blood slowly changes to ice as the guards continue on their way.  “They’ll make a pretty attraction for a few days, up the revenue a little bit.”  They aren’t talking about—they can’t be talking about—“And then boss’ll sell ‘em to the scalers.  They’ll fetch a good price, all those matching scales.”

Dick waits until the guards pass out of hearing range before he lowers himself from the tree.  His fingers are shaking.

They didn’t.

There’s no way—not even Desmond would dare—mers are sapient creatures.

He didn’t put one of them on display like a zoo animal.  He didn’t.

Dick’s willing to believe a lot of awful stuff about the man, but this is a step too far.  Whatever’s going on—and there’s definitely something going on, Dick’s beginning to have suspicions about the private beach and all those random dead bodies—Desmond hasn’t actually captured a mer and put them in the aquarium.

He gets all the way into the empty building, surrounded by dimly lit tanks, before he’s forced to accept it’s even worse.

It’s a merling, the size of a human child, the same orange-and-black scales and silvery hair of its father, but this one Dick doesn’t recognize.  They pause in the middle of a hissing frenzy when they catch sight of Dick, and then proceed to keep trilling, high and sharp.

A child.

Dick balls his hands into fists as slow-burning fury ignites in his gut.  “Shh,” he whispers, as though they can hear him through the glass.  “I’ll get you out of there.”

The merling continues hissing as Dick backs out of the large viewing room, searching for a back door.  He finally finds a staff entrance that leads to stairs to the platforms above the tanks, and these are empty too, lit eerily by emergency lighting and making him feel like a character in a horror movie.

He checks the other tanks as he darts past, making sure Desmond isn’t hiding any other sapient creatures in his aquarium, before he finally reaches the right one.  “Hey,” he says, dropping to his knees on the catwalk and peering in.  The merling’s hidden itself in a corner, watching him warily.  “I’m here to get you out.”

The merling hisses.

Dick curses inside his head and darts a look around to make sure he’s truly alone.  “It’s okay,” Dick says as soothingly as he can.  “I’m here to help.  I’ve met your pod-mates before.  I can get you back to the ocean.”  No dice.  “I—they may have mentioned me?  One of your pod-mates helped me when I got stuck in some rocks.”

That finally gets the merling to move, though they stay well out of reach as they slowly surface.  “The human that can’t swim,” they lisp, moving their mouth carefully as they sound out the human words.

Dick winces but decides to pick his battles.  “That’s me,” he smiles, “My name is Dick.”

“Rose,” the merling answers.

“Hi, Rose,” Dick says gently.  “That’s a pretty name.”  She narrows her eyes at him.  “I can help you get out.”  Rose makes a low, automatic hiss.  “Your pod-mates saved me twice,” Dick tries, “I want to repay the favor.”

The merling does not look convinced.

Dick takes a deep breath, mentally bracing himself, and slowly dips a hand into the water, palm out.

Rose drifts a little closer, more curiosity than suspicion now, until she’s close enough to stretch out and touch.  Dick doesn’t move, waiting and trying to suppress his fidgeting.  Another quick glance around the catwalks—nothing.

Rose rocks closer, and closer, and—latches onto his hand, teeth bared.  Dick immediately flinches, waiting for razor-sharp teeth to bite down…and feels nothing.

“You will take me to Dad,” Rose pronounces, imperial despite her small stature, and Dick smiles as he extends another hand into the water.

“I promise.”

Carrying a baby mer is not an easy task.  Rose keeps squirming, displeased with the feeling of air on her scales, and mer scales feel a lot like silk, slippery even when dry.  Holding her like a human child doesn’t work very well because she doesn’t have hips like a human does, but they worked out some sort of middle ground where Dick hugs her tightly to his chest and she clings to his neck and wraps her tail around him.

Dick still has to frequently stop to adjust his grip, so they aren’t making great progress.  “Do you know where we’re going?” Rose says—not whispers, she doesn’t have any concept of an indoor voice.  “Are you lost?  Should I call—”

“Shh,” Dick hisses, cutting her off.  He’s sticking to patches of shadows and making his way in the direction of the private beach.  The first step is to get Rose in the ocean, everything else comes after.  “I know where I’m going.  Keep your voice down, we don’t want to alert anyone.”

If Dick knew he’d be rescuing a mer tonight, he would’ve come more equipped.

The beach is on the other side of the resort, through a more populated area.  Dick wishes he has something to hide Rose’s tail so he can pretend she’s a human child, but he settles for picking up the pace. 

He just caught sight of the starry night sky through the tree line when a shout erupts behind him.  “The mer!  He’s got the mer!”  Dick turns enough to see one of the guards pointing at him, and then he spins back around and runs.

Rose slips in his grasp but he just tightens his grip, ignoring her gasp as he sprints for the trees, his heart pounding wildly in his ears.  He abandons the path to run up the grassy hill, ducking his head as they crash through the trees.

“Stop!  Stop, or we’ll shoot!”

“They’re getting closer!” Rose shrieks into his ear.

Dick can’t go any faster.  His breaths are getting jagged and his heart is racing.  He fixes his gaze on the dark waters glimmering in the moonlight, sand giving way underneath his shoes, and keeps running.

The ocean is twenty feet away.

“They’re getting away!”

Fifteen.

“Stop!”

Ten—

Rose makes a high-pitched scream and squirms madly in his arms, “Harpoon!”

Dick turns to look, which is his mistake.

The guards do have a harpoon.  They also have guns, out and pointed at him, and they take his moment of hesitation to fire.

Pain slices across his thigh, swift and burning, and Dick crumples on his next step, crashing hard to the ground.  He yanks Rose’s arms off as he does, uncaring of the scrapes her claws make, and flings her out on the sand.  A foot away from the sea.

“Go!” Dick shouts, pushing the merling away from him.  “Just—go!”  She’s looking at him, eyes wide, and Dick curses, shoving her forward that last inch as a wave surges across the sand.

She finally starts wriggling away, splashing in the few inches of water as the wave recedes.  Dick can hear the guards approaching and tries to stagger upright again.  He collapses immediately, pain radiating down his leg, and looks down—the side of his pants gleams a dark red in the moonlight.

“Stay down,” an angry snarl reaches him and Dick looks up into the barrel of a gun.  There are four guards surrounding him, all with guns out.  The one with the harpoon keeps his run to the water line.

Rose has vanished from view and Dick stares at the man and the harpoon, his heart caught in his throat.  Please, he begs inside his head, one hand clamped to his burning wound, please, don’t let them find her.

Something answers his prayer.  The man lowers the harpoon with a curse and turns back to Dick.  “Take him to the boss,” the man growls, malevolent.  “And let him know that the mer’s escaped.”

Dick leans against the railing as the boat sways under his feet, trying to stay upright.  The ocean glitters darkly all around him, near-black under the moonlight, but none of it is as dark as the expression on the man in front of him.

Roland Desmond is a big man.  Sharply dressed, with the kind of cold eyes that remind Dick of unforgiving drops.  And he is very, very angry.

Dick twists his wrists in the tie that held them behind his back, and stares coolly back.  Half his face is throbbing from Desmond’s punch, but the pain is inconsequential.  The crime boss hasn’t brought him to the middle of the ocean just to punch him in the face.

“You’ve made a grave mistake,” Desmond says, voice sharp and cutting.

Dick’s exhausted and bleeding and in no small amount of pain, but Rose is free.  That isn’t a mistake.

“I am not the kind of man you cross,” Desmond says, slow and vicious.  “And yet you trespassed and stole my property.  Do you know what I do to those who go against me?”

Judging by the guards and their guns, Dick has a pretty good guess.

“You had a child in a cage,” Dick retorts, keeping his voice steady by sheer force of will.  “Fuck you.”

“Mers aren’t people,” Desmond retorts, gesturing to one of his guards.  The man yanks Dick away from the railing, towards the back of the boat, and Dick just barely bites down on the scream as his wounded leg is jostled.

The ocean gleams behind him, but Dick can’t swim with his hands tied.  Much less in the cold autumn temperatures and in the dark, this far from shore.

“Yes, they are,” Dick grinds out, minute shivers wracking his frame as another guard kneels and begins—tying something to his feet?  “And they’re a whole hell of a lot better than you.”

Bricks.  They’re tying bricks to his feet—

“If that’s where your sympathies lie, so be it,” Desmond says, looming in front of him as Dick’s exhausted mind puts the pieces together, too slow and too fast.  “You can join them.”

The man places a large hand on Dick’s chest, and pushes.

For a second, Dick’s weightless.  Stuck somewhere between shock and terror, darkness all around him, staring at Desmond’s grim expression.  And then he hits the water.

It’s cold.  It’s dark.  It steals the breath from his lungs in a shocked gasp—mistake, he knows better, he should’ve inhaled—as he plunges into the depths, faster than he’s ever done before.  The bricks fight against his natural buoyancy, pulling him downwards even as he begins to struggle, arms twisting against his binds, feet kicking out against the weights.

He can’t breathe.  He can’t breathe, his lungs are tight, his chest is being squeezed by iron bands.  His leg burns, saltwater blistering in the wound, agony so acute it steals away his thoughts.

It’s dark.

He can’t see anything.

He can’t move, no matter how hard he fights, how hard he struggles, how hard he writhes desperately against his binds.

It’s so dark.

He’s going to die.

The thought is terrifying.  Tears slip out of his eyes, saltwater mingling with saltwater, chest heaving for breath he doesn’t have, his lungs eking out every worthless second of oxygen in an attempt to delay what Dick knows is inevitable.  He can’t free himself from this.  He’s going to die.

Dick will never get to finish his research.  Never get that professorship he wants.  Never see Bruce again, or meet his new grad sibling, or say goodbye to Barbara, or clamber up a trapeze.

This is the end.

He can’t bring himself to stop holding his breath.  It won’t hold out forever, he can feel his thoughts slowing, getting muddier, but panic keeps his lungs arrested, panic and denial.

At least—if he has to die—he’ll die saving someone else’s life.

Dick closes his eyes—purely symbolic, he can’t see anything either way—and quietly prays to the gods he knew as a child, to give him peace and guide him on the way—

Something tightens on his arms, iron grip forcing him still as the bricks pull at his ankles.  Dick—doesn’t understand what’s happening, he tries to twist but he still can’t see, he—there’s something pressing against his mouth, forcing it open and—it’s another mouth, Dick can feel someone else’s tongue, and he struggles fiercely but there’s no escape.  He’s panicking now, brain fuzzy but terrified, hyperventilating—

Wait.

Dick pauses in the middle of a too-fast, too-shallow gulp.

He’s…breathing?

There’s air forced into his mouth in a steady rhythm, a hand tangled his hair keeping him in place.  He can feel claws resting against his skin.  A mer.  Dick still can’t see anything, no matter how hard he strains, a combination of the dim moonlight and the depths to which he’s sunk, but his heartrate gradually settles as he continues to draw in breath.

There’s a trill behind him and Dick flinches as claws settle on his hands.  The binds around his wrists tighten before abruptly releasing, and the ones around his feet do the same, the tension and the weight gone.  Dick cautiously settles his hands on the mer in front of him, fingers skimming across smooth scales as the mouth on his slowly closes.

They jerk underneath his grip, a roiling motion as the grip tightens.  Dick can feel himself being propelled upwards and it’s a small eternity before he breaks the surface with a heavy gasp, desperately sucking in fresh air as he’s held up by a strong grip.

The face in front of his is familiar, silver hair glistening in his blurry vision, and Dick doesn’t have time to register any more details before a shriek splits the air.

“Dick!” a high voice cries out, and Dick swivels in the direction of the noise right as a tiny cannonball barrels into him.  Dick manages to get his arms up to pat Rose’s back as the merling clings to him like a barnacle.  “Dad and Grant and Joey were looking for you, and they couldn’t find you, and I was so worried,” she rattles out, voice muffled against his shoulder, “and you smell like blood.”

Oh, right, the bleeding wound.  Dick’s gradually aware that he’s shivering, in the middle of open ocean more than a mile from shore in the middle of the night.  “Got shot,” he rasps, voice hoarse and cracking.  He feels like someone stuck him in a blender and spun on high—exhausted and dizzy and drained.  “Thank you for saving me.”

“You saved my kid,” the adult mer says, voice low and deep, and his scowl isn’t as frightening this time.  He raises a clawed hand—Dick doesn’t have the energy to flinch—and gently traces the outline of the massive bruise on Dick’s face.  “Humans did this?”

Dick nods weakly.  “Roland Desmond,” he says, wincing as a wave hit his chin.  The mer tightens his grip on Dick’s waist and hefts him a little further out of the water.  The other two merlings watch them silently.  “He—he owns Blockbuster Resort and Casino.”  Gods, Dick is so tired.  He wants to sleep right here, freezing water and bleeding wound be damned.  “He has a lot of influence in the city.”

If Desmond realizes he’s failed, he’ll come after Dick again.  Dick has to go to a hospital, he needs treatment, but he doesn’t know which ones are safe.  Or which half of the BPD isn’t corrupt.  And he’s so very tired.  He has to fight to open his eyes after a blink.

“Dick?” Rose says, but her voice is oddly distant.  “Dick?” comes again, though this time the voice is deeper.  The sounds are becoming fainter and fainter.

Dick doesn’t remember closing his eyes.

Slade stares up at the stars, floating on his back.  The human is curled up on top of him, fast asleep—he didn’t even twitch as Grant clumsily bound his bleeding leg, or when Rose clambered on Slade’s tail in an effort to join him.  Slade can feel soft breaths huffing against his scales as the human slumbers, apparently exhausted.

He can sleep.  He’s safe here.  Slade can sense anyone coming and Grant and Joey are out patrolling.  The bloodstone is also humming in the background, a near silent buzz that tingles against his scales.  It’s old magic, and it doesn’t take kindly to thieves.

Slade closes his eyes and remembers how terrified he was when he realized Rose was missing.  When Grant said that she was talking about exploring the sand beach away from the city.  When Slade got there to find nothing, when all his increasingly frantic calls went unheeded, when he scoured every inch of the ocean in mounting desperation—

When he heard her again, near the beach, crying and trembling and stuttering over herself as she told a story of being captured and locked into a tank and being saved by a human.

“You spend a lot of time in the water for someone who can’t swim,” Slade murmurs to the sleeping human.  It was sheer luck that Slade was close enough to spot the boat, that he didn’t immediately take his pod and flee and instead saw the human being tossed into the ocean.  That he tasted the blood in the water and recognized it.

That he got there before the human finished drowning.

This isn’t a long-term solution.  The human doesn’t have gills, and can’t stay with their pod, no matter how many times Rose asks.  Sure, Slade knows of some magical workarounds for that, but humans belong on land.  The only reason Slade hasn’t deposited him back there is because he isn’t sure where is safe.

Roland Desmond.  Slade won’t forget the name.  His pod might be small, but Slade has a lot of friends and favors in the wild ocean.  And it’ll only take one or two of the worst monsters to destroy the city and everyone in it.

Slade glances down again at the sleeping human, salt-stiff locks curling, darkening bruise against tan skin, faintly furrowed face.  Well.  Maybe not everyone.

:Dad!:  Slade’s musings are interrupted by Grant swimming towards them, fast.  He breaks the surface and immediately starts babbling, “There’s a boat and it’s coming right towards us and I heard them mention Dick!”

Slade goes cold.  “Where?” he demands, moving his tail to dislodge Rose, who wakes with a grumpy start.  “How many people?”

“There’s three people on the boat,” Grant says, pointing in the direction of shore.  Now that Slade’s looking, he can see the shape moving towards them, lights distinct from the neon city behind it.

:Tracking through magic: Joey chirps, and the chill deepens.  That isn’t something Slade can shake off their tail.

Slade twists until he’s vertical again, catching Dick before he falls off.  Dick wakes up when he hits the cold water, movements still lethargic, “What—” and Slade cuts him off with a palm over his mouth, the noise of the boat getting closer.

If he drops down—but Dick can’t breathe underwater—but Slade can breathe for him—but what if the humans have other tricks up their sleeve, Slade can’t leave his pod unprotected—

They’re shouting something through a horn and it gets clearer the closer they get.  “Dick!  Dick!  Dick, where are you?” the voice echoes across the water.

Dick taps on Slade’s arm and Slade lets go.  “My friends,” he says hoarsely.  “Can you get me closer?”

Slade scowls automatically, but he can’t deny the relief as he tugs Dick closer to the approaching boat.  The calls keep repeating as Slade pulls Dick alongside the boat, keeping him out of its reach as he scans it.

Three people, as Grant said, one manning the tiller, one with the horn, one pacing worriedly.

“What if the spell isn’t working correctly?” the dark-haired one says, voice dipping low.  “What if he’s already—”

“The tracking spell shows he’s alive and near here, so we just need to keep searching,” the red-haired one says sharply.  “Richard John Grayson, where are you?”

“Babs,” Dick rasps weakly, and then louder as Slade grudgingly pulls him closer, “Barbara!”

The people on the boat, and the lights, swing their way.  Slade glares against the beam, irritated.  The humans freeze and stare.

Slade has to support Dick all the way to the edge of the boat.  The human is an abysmal swimmer.  “Babs,” Dick repeats, weakly curling his fingers on the deck, “Amy.  What are you guys doing here?”

That finally gets the humans to unfreeze.  “What are we doing here?” the dark-haired one repeats.  “What are you doing here, Grayson?”  Their gaze sweeps over Slade.  “And who’s your…friend?”

Slade makes sure to stretch out his jaw to bare his teeth.  The humans seem threatened.  Good.

“I—Desmond—it’s a long story,” Dick says finally, stretching up his hands.  “Help me up.”

Slade lets go when the other humans grab on, and they pull Dick onto the boat.  One of them immediately brings Dick a blanket and wraps it around his trembling form.  It isn’t that cold.

“Thank you for saving me,” Dick croaks out, peering over the edge of the boat to look at Slade.

“You saved Rose,” Slade says tersely.  “We’re even.”  The ocean doesn’t like debts.  “And the next time you decide to jump into the ocean, learn how to swim.”

“I do know how to swim!” Dick says, offended, but Slade is already swimming away.  One human delivered into the hands of his own, check.  One human still out there breathing air instead of screaming under Slade’s claws, check.

He’s going to deal with that.  No one hurts his pod and lives.  Ever.

“If I see you doing anything other than writing grant proposals for the next six months, Grayson, I swear I’ll chain you to your lab.”

“That’s unfair!  I got shot at and nearly drowned.  Isn’t that punishment enough?”

“Has that actually taught you a lesson?”

“…Be more prepared when I go trespassing on property belonging to a crime boss?”

 “Ugh.  And here I used to think Wayne was bad.  How did you survive your PhD again?”

“I’ll have you know that was only a minor hospital stay and the police caught those cult members so—”