Chapter Text
Tim was nervous as he and Babs walked to the lab on Monday. Babs had met him after his class let out to tell him that the department head had approved him, and so that she could take him to get the tour of the lab.
And meet the other assistants. That was the main bit Tim was nervous about honestly.
He knew Babs, he was getting to know the field, and he knew more about maren than any other human. Not that he could call it maren, he reminded himself. He’d have to see if Babs had come up with anything to call it, or if he was going to have to say ‘the potential mer language’ ever time. That would get old fast.
What he didn’t know were the assistants. He’d heard Babs talk about ‘the girls’ plenty enough, but he didn’t have any details on them as people. Would they think he’s as useless as the other guy? Would they resent him for getting a position so easily when they probably had to go through a whole application process? Oh god he didn’t even know what the process was, they were going to hate him, and they’d be right to, he was totally taking advantage of Babs by getting this spot, he should-
He was knocked out of his spiral by Babs lightly squeezing his shoulder, shooting him a knowing look.
“Hey. You’re alright. I promise, they’re going to love you, it’ll be fine. Now, come on.” She said, opening a door that Tim hadn’t even noticed them stopping in front of. Tim didn’t even have a chance to start panicking again before she was pulling him inside.
“Steph! Cass! Come meet our new hire!”
There was a clatter from the next room over before two girls about his age came tumbling into the room. One was a bit taller than him, with long blonde hair tied up in a ponytail, and a violently purple shirt under the lab coat that she had left unbuttoned. Following much more calmy behind her was an Asian girl about a head shorter, with her short hair just long enough to be tied into a little tuft at the back of her neck. Her lab buttoned properly, with only a small triangle of black shirt visible at her neck.
“Babs! You found someone already?” Steph asked, practically bouncing over to Tim to squint at him suspiciously. “This one isn’t useless as well, is he?”
Babs sighed, her face in her hands, and Cass silently reached forward to tug Steph out of Tim’s personal bubble. He appreciated it.
“No, Steph, he isn’t going to be useless. And please don’t talk about him like he’s not there. This is Tim, I told you about him, remember?”
“Oh, wait, this is that Tim?” Steph looked at least somewhat chastised, rubbing her neck as she looked at Tim. “Hey, sorry man, that was a bit of a dick move, my bad.” She squinted at him again. “I feel like I know you from somewhere.”
Tim shuffled his feet, a little embarrassed at the attention.
“It’s alright. I don’t think we’ve ever met before though.”
Steph frowned at him for another second or two, thinking hard, before her face lit up.
“Oh, I remember now, you’re Timothy Drake, right? We were in Patterns of Marine Behaviour together. I remember because my friend told me that everyone said you’d been, like legit missing-presumed-dead for years, and then you beat out all of us on the exam. People said you got, like actually perfect marks.”
Tim blushed, now thoroughly embarrassed.
“I just got lucky.” He mumbled, trying to downplay, but Steph snorted.
“Did we take the same test? Because I’m pretty sure luck had nothing to do with it. Damn, if I knew you were the same Tim Babs keeps talking about, I would have been pestering her to get you to join up earlier, everyone in that class was talking about you.”
Tim wanted to crawl into a hole. Luckily Babs picked that moment to intervene.
“Yes, yes, Tim’s a little genius and we’re very glad to have him on board. Now, I’m sure I don’t need to say that there will be no pestering Tim with questions about things he doesn’t want to talk about. We’re here to research, not interrogate him because some tabloid made you think he’s part of some sort of conspiracy.”
The girls nodded solemnly, Steph looking a little abashed, and Tim relaxed slightly.
“Now, let’s do this properly. Girls, this is Tim Drake. He’s joining up on very short notice, so I expect you to make him feel welcome and help him out as he’s still finding his feet. Tim, this is Steph and Cass. They’re both second years and have been helping me since the start of the year, so they should be able to answer any questions you have.”
Steph gave a little wave at her name, and Cass smiled at him, signing something with her hands that Tim didn’t recognise.
He was confused for a second, before it hit him and he felt like an idiot. Of course, she wasn’t signing in the same language he knew. She’d be using one of the human ones, which Tim didn’t know any of.
Babs confirmed what he was thinking. “Cass isn’t Deaf, but she has some issues with speaking, so she generally uses ASL. She says it’s nice to meet you.”
“You too.” Tim answered politely, nodding at Cass, who smiled at him.
“Alright, let’s get this show on the road.” Babs said, clapping her hands. “Tim, lab coats are over here, we don’t do much work where we’d actually need them, but this is still technically a bio lab, so they’re worn whenever you’re inside. And not like Steph does, don’t think I missed that Steph, do it up properly. Alright, let’s start over here…”
Babs walked him through the lab, explaining the layout and function of everything. It wasn’t very big, according to Babs the rest of the building was waiting on some kind of construction, which was why they were the only ones here. Most of it was desks, computers and cabinets of equipment. Babs briefly talked him through the different audio equipment, but said she’d go more in depth on that another time.
The main part that made it stand out as a marine biology lab, was the adjoining room with a saltwater pool set into the floor, large enough to fit an adult mer fairly comfortably, if not much else. It looked like one wall had an exterior roller door leading into the room.
“Honestly, the only reason we got access to the pool was because none of the other research groups applied.” Babs explained. “I only put down for it on a whim, so I was pretty surprised to get it. We haven’t had to use it yet, but we keep the water maintained just in case we find an injured mer. We make sure to keep an eye out whenever we go out on the boat, in case we find one that needs help. Hasn’t happened yet, but after that big exposé on poaching last year-” Tim flinched. “-I made sure we were certified for rehabilitation should it be necessary.”
Tim inhaled slowly, making sure to keep his breaths even as Babs moved on to the next thing. He spotted Cass looking at him quizzically, but he smiled at her, and she seemed to relax.
“Now,” Babs said, having finished the tour and now fiddling with one of the computers, a speaker attached. “I know you’ve heard me rambling plenty about what we do here, but you’ve actually joined just as we’re starting a new angle on data collection.”
Tim tilted his head, curious and just a little nervous. What exactly did that mean? Was she going to start doing more than dangling a microphone in the water? He’d have to warn his family if that was the case, or see if he could dissuade her.
“We’ve been analysing our previous recordings, trying to find the most frequent possible words and word combinations. Hopefully, we’ll be able to play this to the mer and record their responses. If we can get consistent results, then we can start mapping the sounds to greetings, warnings, all kinds of categories. We’ll be able to show that there really is a consistent and understood meaning to the sounds, and once we have the basics down, we might actually be able to start communicating with them, figure out some real merlish words.”
Tim nodded consideringly, thinking the idea over and trying not to wince at merlish. God, that was going to take some getting used to. That was seriously what they’d settled on?
What Babs had described wasn’t a bad starting point. Without some feedback from the mers, there was no real way for her to start decoding the sounds, she recorded, even if she managed to break them down into their individual words. If she could figure out a couple, she’d be able to play with combinations of them to figure out meanings. Tim would have to call his family and warn them to play along so they didn’t get spooked and start hiding again.
“We’re planning to do the first test this weekend. Do you want to hear the sound we’ve prepared? We took some of the most common sounds to form what we hypothesise is a kind of greeting.”
“Sure, that sounds really interesting.” Tim said, curious what kind of sentence they could make from all the recordings they’d gotten over the years. Curious, and a little nervous, given his recollection of their contents.
Babs smiled widely, clicking a few buttons on the computer, and letting Tim hear one of her recordings for the first time.
There was a fair bit of interference, likely from the water, but after a second, he could hear Jason’s voice coming through, the sound choppy and the pitch inconsistent as if they’d spliced together words from several different recordings.
“…HEY- idiots. …stupid boATPEOple-…-re dumb!”
The lab was silent for a moment. Babs and Steph were both grinning excitedly. Cass was looking expectant.
It took everything in him not to burst out laughing.
“Uh-” he cleared his throat, desperately biting the inside of his lip. “Wow, that’s… that’s so cool. You said that’s one of their greetings?”
“That’s our best guess,” Steph jumped in enthusiastically. “We did a bunch of analysis on the recordings. These are some of the most common, and they’re most often said at the start of a phrase, so our working hypothesis is a greeting of some sort. We’ll be able to tell more after the weekend.”
Well, Tim thought a little manically as he thought back to all the days Jason and Dick had spent yelling insults up at the boat while he signed ideas at them, they weren’t entirely wrong. ‘Hey assholes’ counted as a greeting, right?
“Mm-hm,” he managed, his voice coming out significantly higher than usual. Cass shot him a curious look, and he cleared his throat again. “That is… fascinating. That’s really so fascinating. I can’t wait to hear the response you get.”
In that much at least, he wasn’t lying. No way was he spoiling the surprise for his family before the first test, he wanted to hear their reaction.
He wondered if Babs and the girls had identified mer laughter yet. If not, they were about to get a very robust sample.
“Thanks, Tim.” Babs said, “I’m really excited. I just- I feel like we might be able to start making some real progress now, y’know?”
Tim nodded, returning her smile as he tried to ignore the little pit of guilt in his stomach.
Babs cared so much about this, even without any personal connection to the mers. She just wanted to help them, and she was working so hard to do it. Tim couldn’t help but feel a little like a fraud, sharing in her excitement like this.
Just like in his classes, he knew more about this subject than everyone in the room combined, but he was keeping quiet to protect his secret. Out in the lecture halls it was an annoyance, having to hide what he knew. Here it felt like a betrayal.
Tim shook his head, trying to clear the thoughts from his mind.
It had to be this way. He couldn’t risk revealing his secret when he still had work to do on land. Besides, none of his knowledge had been scientifically proven by humans, so it couldn’t be used to affect legislation like Babs was trying to do, right?
So, it was better like this, after the first test, he’d tell his family what Babs was doing, and they would make sure she got good recordings. If she’d tried this on any other pod, there was a good chance she would have got no response or been attacked if it sounded like she’d trapped a mer on the boat.
Tim was helping. He would make sure Babs got good data, he’d try and give hints to help her along without being too suspicious. Then Babs would succeed, and the laws would be changed, and his family would be safe.
And maybe then, when he knew mers wouldn’t have to live in so much danger, maybe he could finally come clean to the Gordons. Maybe they could even meet the rest of his family.
Alright, Tim thought, focussing back on the conversation the other three were having. Let’s do this.