Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Oh it's me and you know

And as the years go by

Our friendship will never die

You're gonna see, it's our destiny

Cause you've got a friend in me

“Can anyone tell me what city we’re going to?” Jason’s teacher calls, her voice just barely audible over the sound of the whipping wind. She’s standing tall at the end of the dock, palms cupped around her mouth and a thick jacket over her full wetsuit despite the rare Gotham sunshine.

Late March mornings really are beautiful in Gotham. It’s not quite warm enough yet to entirely dispose of the year’s morning fog, especially over the water like this. The restless waves lapping gently against the legs of the dock and stretching out further than the eye can see, disappearing into blurry fog that fans the hues of the sunrise out like watercolours. It will meld into the greys of the day soon enough, but at this specific time of morning, the horizon almost looks like dripping honey that Jason might reach out and touch. The biting cold nipping at his nose and ears makes it all the more realistic and tangible, a sensation to cement the existence of this moment into his memory forever and prove to him that he hasn’t simply been beguiled by a particularly exceptional painting.

The boy beside him snorts. “Uh, Atlantis?” he says, as if Miss Holloway is the one being stupid, looking at his friends to echo his amusement.

Miss Holloway offers a smile that’s more like the smirk of a shark. “Is Africa a country, Tyler?”

That throws Tyler for a loop. It really shouldn’t, though. Holloway is just that sort of teacher. “Er…”

Jason had figured that the preps at Gotham Academy would be more like a grand collection of the kids from class who are always the first to raise their hands during quiz reviews and have their work kept as examples for future years. It’s not. It’s pretty clear now who works hard because they want to, who works hard because they’re forced to, and who doesn’t work hard because their daddy pays for everything. Tyler Hamburg and his trio of idiots fit very nicely into the third category.

“Because if you paid attention in class, then you’d know that Atlantis isn’t a city. Now, can anyone please tell me what city we’re going to?”

Some boy who Jason hasn’t bothered to learn the name of chirps an obedient, “Poseidonis.”

“Thank you, Sebastian. We’re going to Poseidonis, one of the two major cities in Atlantis. Atlantis is the name of the former continent that sank beneath the waves thousands of years ago. Remember that the people we’ll be meeting today used to be humans just like us, and have since evolved into many different branches of amphibious creatures due to the nature of their environment. Every city in Atlantis is similar in concept to the Greek city-states you studied in middle school and can’t be remotely compared to each other. If you don’t know what city-states are by this point then, well, I can’t help you anymore.”

She’s his favourite teacher, if Jason is honest.

The crowd of his classmates to his right swarm with excitement when Miss Holloway stops talking, although they weren’t really being attentive listeners to begin with. Gotham Academy had been selected as one of the first schools to take a tour into the depths of the ocean and become acquainted with the Atlanteans as a gesture of peace and prosperity between the two nations (city-states? Needless to say, many things below the ocean’s surface no longer fit the carefully constructed definitions of those above), and the exceptionality of this noteworthy opportunity is not lost on any of them.

Atlantis is rarely not in a state of war. If not with itself, then with everything and everyone around it (including, once, gigantic jellyfish), and if not that, then with the surface world. The treaty that the United States had managed to persuade Poseidonis into is the first of its kind and constantly being taken advantage of to learn more of the society beneath the waves. It’s already been many years since the treaty has been in place, and since then only those of official political or respected scientific statuses have braved the journey. In hopes to maintain good relations, painstakingly careful proceedings have been made to educate the masses on these new discoveries. First, a gingerly selected (read: extremely wealthy) small group of school children are being given the opportunity to go below and tour the nation. Then, as are the hopes, a group of Atlanteans selected in a similar manner will breach the waves for the first time in a gesture of non-hostility to learn more about their neighbours. It’s the next large step towards establishing strong relations between the formerly warring states that will hopefully prevent them from easily slipping into antagonistic territories again.

Of course, no one is going to mention that the only reason this was possible with the United States is because of the Justice League. Recruiting Aquaman really does have its perks, even if he’s technically part-time (how does that work, anyway? Being a part-time superhero? It’s not like they have salaries or anything). Jason suspects that Bruce’s motivations for putting him on this trip is so that he can have an introduction into Atlantean culture in order to have an easier time on any possible future exposure to them. It’s a good idea. Jason just personally thinks it would have been a better and way less expensive idea to just go down to Atlantis together in capes and get a tour from the king himself.

He’s still a little bitter about that. It’s not like he wants to spend time with the dumbasses that are meant to be his classmates, who are currently coalescing into a single, swarming mass of high-pitched and grating voices (okay, he’ll be honest -- very few of his classmates are dumb. Most of them are far smarter than he is, but insulting them in his head makes him feel better, so).

They’re waiting for the submarine. Which, that in of itself is amazing. Jason knows that Bruce has a submarine. He won’t confirm the notion, but he won’t deny it either and in his mind that’s the same as a yes (especially in Bat-speak). He’s never been in a submarine before and the very idea is enough to make him want to do backflips in excitement.

The ocean is an excellent new map to discover, like Jason is a colonist or an explorer and the submarine will become his Mayflower, his means to a new world. And, in a very real sense, that is exactly what is about to happen. Underneath the waves, he’s about to take a submarine to glimpse one of the first good looks at a city of an entire society that has been tucked away into the dark crevices of an unknown that humans have been cut off all access to for centuries, and have been otherwise too frightened to venture into since.

Atlanteans aren’t stupid. It was difficult enough to allow humans to peer into their life, but there isn’t any tolerance whatsoever for any sort of technological device that the humans bring with them. Not even diving gear is permitted (no one has any idea yet, except the adults in charge of the trip, how it is that they’ll be able to breathe, but apparently the Atlanteans have a method that they have yet to divulge and those who have encountered it have been sworn to silence). Even the submarine isn’t given access within two miles of the city’s perimeter. Jason’s class will be retrieved by Atlantean warriors and escorted into the city limits. That very extensive list of contraband includes cameras. There are no clear photos of Atlantis taken from closer than a couple miles away.

The submarine arrives, and he can feel the kids beside him stir in amazement but honestly, he’s a little underwhelmed. He, at least, imagined something more impressive than an ugly dark grey oval. Jason just barely manages to hold himself back from darting inside, unwilling to get trampled beneath the quickly moving feet rushing to get within the relative warmth of something with a cover. They take far too long getting down one by one even if there is only a dozen or so of his classmates (not a shocker, many parents aren’t too thrilled with the idea of letting their children into an unknown place at the bottom of the ocean) and one would think they’ve never climbed down a ladder in their lives. He’s the last to enter before a woman in military gear and uniform. So there are going to be accompanying Seals after all.

The space in the submarine is a lot less than Jason would have liked. He suddenly feels claustrophobic and attempts to push himself to the outskirts of the swarming mass of his classmates, pressing himself up against machines that look like upgraded DVD players. He isn’t very successful at getting his own breathing space. If one of his classmates were to attack him like this then he’s positive that he would be able to take them down without issue, but the Seals are a bit more of a gamble. When size and weight are disadvantages, close quarters are ill advised.

Eventually, they’re shuffled into what must be a control room, where his teacher and an important looking man that Jason couldn’t care less about are delivering a speech. Jason probably already got this speech from Bruce, so he takes the opportunity to examine his surroundings.

This looks more like something he would imagine of the self-proclaimed, mythological ‘Batsub’. The windows are certainly a nice touch at first glance, but, well. “Uh,” Jason starts awkwardly, turning to the Seal beside him. “Are you supposed to have windows in a sub?”

The Seal must have been expecting some other sort of reaction from Jason, and yes, he can hear it now, his classmates’ incessant complaining and loud, nasally voices oo-ing and ahh-ing. They sound impressed now, but give it a few minutes and he’s sure that they’ll start getting impatient.

Too bad this trip is going to be a few hours longer than that.

The Seal’s surprise at his question, luckily, is pleasant. “You know, normally I’d question it,” the man shrugs. “But this baby was recently upgraded by the Justice League, and no one really bothers trying to figure out how they make anything work.”

Yeah, that answer is good enough for him. Jason nods and attempts to find a quiet corner to sit and wait, plugging in his headphones, just barely out of the way of moving feet. His classmates get led away into another room and someone taps on his shoulder, but he pretends to be asleep and they leave him alone.

Unsurprisingly, the windows aren’t much of a main attraction for most of the trip. Jason bets that the only ocean tour that the rich brats around him have had is one around the Hawaiian islands, because he has no idea what they’re expecting to see as they peer out into the murky depths of the Atlantic Ocean but they certainly aren’t finding it. Of course they aren’t. If he were a fish, he wouldn’t be stupid enough to swim up to some gigantic glowing whale-looking thing with weird creatures staring at him from inside.

Now that Jason really thinks about it, he can understand why fish get scared so easily.

The ocean truly is massive, and with nowhere else to look he finds himself staring absentmindedly out of the window that he’s leaning against, which covers nearly half of the curved wall. He hears the white noise of an announcement blaring from the speakers overhead, but Eminem is currently too loud in his ears to hear what it is.

That’s when he sees it.

The ocean water is lighter here, touched by the sun’s light and not pitch black like Jason had expected. The overhead lights from the submarine aren’t even necessary by this point. It’s not as deep as the areas they had just been passing through because this is the first time that he can see the ocean floor, as if they’re at the top of a ledge or cliff and just a few feet ahead everything will suddenly drop away to disappear once again into dismal depths. If he looked closer, he’d have seen small creatures scurrying across the ocean floor, beds of rock and coral home to entire ecosystems, and fish in the distance. But his attention has already been caught by something else.

Something approaching fast.

Jason yanks his earbuds out, pausing his music to stare incredulously at the figures quickly growing larger as they close the distance between them and the submarine. Immediately when his earbuds come out, the cacophony of excited voices from behind him assaults his senses, but this time he can’t even find it in him to be annoyed.

It’s Aqualad.

Kaldur'ahm, Jason’s mind immediately supplies from what he’s read of the files on the Batcomputer. Of course, Kaldur'ahm won’t know it’s him, has never met him, and none of Jason’s classmates will know that they’re meeting Aqualad because, just as Batman has been doing with himself, Aquaman has been keeping Aqualad behind wraps. That, and Aqualad tends to remain in the ocean when Aquaman is on the surface. The only time he comes to the surface is to assist the JL when Aquaman can’t. A true partner instead of just a sidekick, Jason remarks bitterly.

Last he thought, that’s what Robin is supposed to be too.

Beside him is Aquagirl, Tula, and Garth, another trainee under Aquawoman. Jason feels his heart kickstart into beating ten times faster because he knows all of their faces and they don’t know his. He knows exactly who they are and they have no idea that he knows. It’s a power rush, if he’s honest with himself. Of course, they also have no secret ID’s, but he knows more than just their names.

Their abilities. Their histories. Pasts. All neatly folded into three files, all in Jason’s head, and he can’t decide if he feels thrilled by the thought or if he wants to puke because it isn’t right. He shouldn’t know this much about people he has never met. He wouldn’t want to have his life read off like a series of unfortunate events from a file, why should he do the same to others?

Tula and Garth remain outside of the submarine, watching the window as Kaldur'ahm ducks away in order to make his entrance inside. When he emerges from what is apparently some sort of door in the floor, the ocean streaming down his arms and chest, everyone around him is dead silent.

Kaldur'ahm’s eyes are entrancing in person. His file said silver, but it’s a thin sliver surrounding blown out pupils that, as Jason watches, are violently attempting to contract at the sudden onslaught of light in the interior of the submarine. To the Atlantean’s credit, he doesn’t flinch too badly. He’s wearing a form fitting red and black suit with black threads that wind around his arms.

He glances around the room, opens his mouth, then closes it again in order to clear his throat before he can speak. His face almost contorts into something uncomfortable, and Jason bets that English isn’t too kind on Atlantean vocal chords. He’s impressed that they can speak it at all. They have an entirely different alphabet, not to mention the difference between speaking through water and speaking through air. “Is...this everyone?” Kaldur'ahm asks, struggling for a split second before slipping into the language.

“Uh, yes, yes it is,” Miss Holloway says, stepping forward. Jason watches as a glance exchanges between her and the man with her (Jason has deduced that he’s the commander) before she steps back again in apology and he takes her place.

“I’m--” the commander begins.

Kaldur'ahm blinks once and smoothly interrupts. “I know who you are. You have made a trip here before and we never forget a face. My apologies, but as far as I am aware, it is not you I have been instructed to welcome.”

Ah, right, and Jason had almost forgotten about the infamous stick-up-the-ass attitude of the Atlanteans. He knows that they’re a friendly and loyal group once they’ve warmed up, particularly Kaldur'ahm, judging by the comments Bruce left on his file, but they never take kindly to newcomers who pose themselves as threats. The submarine commander, Navy general, whoever this guy is (he probably should have listened to that introductory speech) certainly doesn’t look very welcoming. Kaldur'ahm calculated his stance and attitude and reacted accordingly. Jason finds himself admiring that.

“This group will be under my and my people’s watch and protection during their visit here,” Navy-Guy says, taking Kaldur'ahm’s coldness in stride.

Kaldur'ahm nods. “Very well.” He turns towards Miss Holloway again and extends a hand. To her, he offers a small smile, still polite and stiff but significantly better than the stone-faced attitude he had thrown at Navy-Guy. “My name is Kaldur'ahm. I have come on behalf of my King to show you our home. Outside, you will see my companions Tula and Garth, both of whom have accompanied me to assist in escorting you within our city.”

Miss Holloway smiles and awkwardly takes the outstretched hand, shaking it briefly before letting go and glancing behind her to the window and the other two Atlanteans. “Susan Holloway. I’m the teacher for these students.”

“From the city of Gotham, yes? If I am not mistaken, that is also the city in which the Batman occupies?”

“You’re right. Have you met him?” Holloway asks, slightly taken aback.

“Briefly,” says Kaldur'ahm. His eyes quickly scan over the crowd. Jason stiffens against his better judgement. He has the strangest feeling that Kaldur'ahm is looking for him. Although the Atlantean’s eyes linger on Jason and a few of his classmates (all of whom, Jason realises, are boys with dark hair around 5’3), his attention eventually diverts to two pouches at his side, clasped around his waist like a belt.

“Before you may proceed, there are gifts which I must grant you,” he declares, now clearly addressing everyone in the room. He opens his fist, which had just reached into both of his pouches, to reveal two tiny marbles, refracting light like bubbles (they kind of resemble something Jason might find in bubble tea, he notes absentmindedly). One is a milky colour, like a pearl, while the other is perfectly clear. “Each one of you will be given these two gifts. There is no translation into English explaining what they are that I can use, but this one”--he points to the milky marble--”will give you the gift of temporarily understanding and speaking our language, while this one”--he gestures to the clear marble--”will give you the gift of temporarily breathing our air and hardening your skin to protect it from the elements. The second may be swallowed, but the first is to be placed under the tongue until dissolved.”

Kaldur’ahm approaches Miss Holloway in order to carefully place the marbles in her hands. She looks confused, cautious, but overall curious. “How do these work?” she asks, bringing them up to her face to examine. Kaldur’ahm gives a soft smile.

“A good question,” he answers vaguely. “Please do not place these in your mouths yet, for you will be unable to understand or speak English and I believe your commander has words to share with you all.” He proceeds to begin handing marbles out to everyone in the room. Jason is surprised to find that he can hardly feel them at all except for the slight sensation of something cold in his palm, like a single dewdrop. After he’s done, he nods at the commander, who gathers everyone’s attention.

“Everyone, you will have to leave anything on your person besides your wetsuits in here. Phones and other technologies should be obvious, but also necklaces, bracelets, rings, and earrings. If something gets lost down there, and it will, you’re never getting it back. Place your shoes and socks against the window.”

They were already all briefed on the procedures back at the docks, so Jason already has his shoes off and, as much as he doesn’t want to look impatient, he can’t help but bounce a little from foot to foot while he waits for people to figure out how to take their socks off without dropping the tiny marbles in their hands.

Then, they eat the marbles as instructed, and start filing through the floor one by one.

Jason doesn’t notice any particular change when the milky marble gets dissolved, but when he swallows the clear one, feels it pop on its way down his throat, he gets the sensation that the air is suddenly too heavy for him, and the skin on his arms and hands itch. He panics for a second, thinking that maybe he’s getting an allergic reaction, but as far as he knows Atlanteans dabble in magic and this is probably magical too, so unless he’s Superman and somehow allergic to magic, he doesn’t think it’s a problem. Also, judging by the exclamations of his classmates, they’re discovering the same feeling.

He drops down into a chamber, the floor closes above him, and then the chamber is opening and he’s being submerged totally in the water, and oh god he can’t breathe--

But then there’s someone grabbing him, and Jason opens his eyes to look into mesmerising violet ones, which seem concerned, and then he realises that they’re speaking and how are they speaking--

“Breathe, breathe,” Garth is saying, except the words don’t sound like ‘breathe’, they sound totally different but somehow, somehow Jason knows what he’s saying. He opens his mouth and tries to say that he can’t, if he does he’ll drown, but when he opens his mouth, he realises that he doesn’t feel the pressing sensation of suffocation.

He has no idea how. He can’t feel water in his lungs. Also, Jason realises as he blinks owlishly at Garth, who smiles back at him, his eyes aren’t burning. Actually, he can see clearly. In salt water.

He should be going blind or something, shouldn’t he?

What happens from there is sort of a blur. Jason is too focused on his new abilities, the feeling of swimming without needing to struggle to keep his head above the surface or holding his breath or without something heavy dragging him down, to notice what’s going on around him. Totally submerged like this, he can hardly even feel his wetsuit, which stops at the neck and leaves his hair to float around his head like a halo. It feels a little exposing. It feels like flying.

They get on some sort of...wheel-less motorcycle thing and speed towards Poseidonis and the water rushing at his face only feels like sluggish, heavy wind. After that, the ocean floor just sort of...fades, into jagged rock, and then melts into the city of Poseidonis. There’s not much fanfare, no gates, but Jason would be hard pressed to believe that they have no security. He passes multiple Atlanteans dressed from head to toe in armour, concealed by rocks. He figures that having gates are impractical when someone could just as easily enter the city from above.

Despite the drilling Batman put him through in situational awareness, Jason finds that he’s hardpressed to pay attention to the details of what’s going on around him, even when he sort of starts getting used to his newly granted abilities (he’s not going to call them super powers, he’s not). It’s overwhelming and he can’t even imagine how his classmates must be feeling.

Jason’s classmates gasp and point at the different species of creatures that they pass. Maybe seeing half reptilian/fish people would be more shocking if Jason hadn’t already met Killer Croc. He’s too preoccupied with staring at everything he sees to his sides and in the distance, every plant and person and Atlantean and creature (and moving pictures? He swears he saw a few murals on the walls shifting) to pay much attention to what Tula is saying about the places they pass, but he does hear her describe a clearing they eventually enter as the training arena. He probably could have figured that out on his own, though, when he sees an average-looking Atlantean whipping water figures at what must be Lagoon Boy. Jason can feel the ripples of the large displacements of water brush up against his skin.

Tula calls what they’re doing ‘magic’ in a very roundabout, unspecific way, but the explanation seems to make sense to her and at least it’s more of an explanation than Kaldur’ahm seemed able to give.

Their first stop is the science laboratory. According to Miss Holloway, the knowledge they’ll learn here is invaluable, as the strides Atlanteans have made in terms of research about the ocean and under-water technologies far surpasses their own. It’s all pretty interesting, but Jason bets that if something here has the possibility of becoming even remotely relevant to his life, Bruce already has it.

Still, it wouldn’t hurt to have a look around. Maybe he can finally impress Bruce with knowing more than he expects about Atlantean technology and its uses.

Probably not.

In any case, today is only a gloss over of what they’ll be doing in the evening and the better part of tomorrow. They have to eat some time, after all.

A boy Jason hardly remembers the name of, a lanky nerdy with short cropped pale blonde hair (it’s a terrible haircut, really) and dorky glasses, looks around in a mixture of awe and suspicion. “Where are you supposed to go to the bathroom?” he says to no one in particular. Jason figures that they might as well start talking to each other directly, since their general reclusive ways cause them both to constantly end up at the back of the group together and they already have the habit of either talking to themselves or the room at large, but he doesn’t feel prepared to socialise. He doesn’t answer.

The group slows down as they enter the building and into a hallway that seems to encircle the entire laboratory. Jason is confused for a moment until he realises that the unnamed boy beside him is flailing more than swimming and remembers that not everyone has a vigilante-grade workout regime. Swimming for long periods of time is supposed to be hard work. He wonders what would have happened if there had been someone in the group who didn’t know how to swim.

Recalling that he’s supposed to be just as out of shape as the unnamed boy, Jason slows himself down until he’s just barely kicking his feet, and ends up lagging behind. From this distance he can’t hear what’s being said (it’s a little weird to believe that he can hear anything at all underwater, but it must be another effect of the magic pills Aqualad fed them -- the sound waves still don’t travel very well, though). He’s alright with that. The view of the city outside of the hall through the windows captivate his attention enough.

“Why are there glass windows when the water is the same temperature everywhere?” he asks out loud, mostly to himself. He’s not expecting an answer.

“To block out currents, especially ones caused by someone’s magic. The amount of people who can control water currents in this place is ridiculous and inconvenient.”

“Oh,” Jason says, turning to face the person who had spoken beside him, only to realise there’s no one there. He frowns, until the voice says again:

“Down here.”

Jason looks down.

There’s someone swimming under him, on their back in order to look up at his face. He pauses for a moment, taken aback. Another weird thing about living underwater, he notes. You can travel with people side by side as well as up and down.

“You’re one of the land dwellers, aren’t you?” the Atlantean asks, beaming.

Oddly enough, the first thing Jason notices about him is that he isn’t wearing a shirt. Everyone Jason’s seen so far has some sort of wetsuit on, but apparently this boy hasn’t bothered with that. Jason’s suit is built in with a heating device, as is everyone else’s, and he suspects one of the magic pills gave them all a better tolerance for the frigid waters. It’s all very necessary to prevent them from freezing to death. He has a hard time comprehending how this boy isn’t.

The second is his skin. Smooth and unblemished and pearly white, light fans out on it in an uninterrupted gradient. There aren’t even any red undertones. His dark hair makes such a contrast with it that it’s jarring.

The third is his tail.

“Woah!” Jason is so startled that he stops swimming, and the boy continues a bit until he also stops and is able to face Jason at the same level. If anything, his smile has grown at Jason’s reaction.

“I’ll take that as a yes. Also because your nose is really pink. Only land dwellers’ noses turn pink in Atlantis. Are they always pink? Do they turn pink on land?”

His tail is red, like blood. The scales shine from the light coming from all around them, scattered by bioluminescent creatures, and sparkle in a way that remind Jason of rubies, gradually climbing their way up his stomach and sides until they fade away into the milky expanse of his skin.

Before Jason can begin to think about answering, the merman continues: “I’ve seen surface dwellers pass by here, but I’ve never talked to one before. You don’t have gills. That’s weird. I never noticed that you don’t have gills. How do you breathe? Wait, you use your lungs, right? I’ve only ever used my lungs to talk. Constantly using them to breathe seems annoying. It would be like constantly talking, and I don’t like talking all that much.” He stops and seems to reconsider. “Well, normally. I’m talking a lot to you because you’re a surface dweller. Obviously.”

“Because I’m a surface dweller?”

“Yeah,” the boy agrees, like that makes so much sense. “And surface dwellers are weird.”

“You’re the one who’s half fish. You’re weirder.”

“I’m the one who has the evolutionary capability of surviving in the water. You’re weirdest.”

Jason tries to glare, but only succeeds in gaping incredulously because he’s talking to someone with an actual tail.

And, wow. It’s long. It has to be the size of Jason’s entire body, the way it trails out behind the merman. Or maybe most of its length is just at the end, at the part where the fin turns into something that reminds Jason of a wedding veil, translucent and wispy and curling in the water like the body of an eel.

The boy’s eyes, blue like the ocean around him, follow Jason’s own line of sight. He seems to compare their two bodies with intense curiosity. He nods, like he’s come to some sort of grand conclusion. “You’re short,” he says.

“I know.”

“Like, really short.”

Jason glares. “If you were a human, you would be shorter,” because he would, judging by the length of his torso. “Measured from the hip, I’m way taller.”

“Whatever helps you sleep at night.”

Jason can’t decide whether or not he likes this guy.

“Humans travel in schools, right?” the boy asks, and Jason has to take a moment to figure out what the boy is referring to.

“I mean, yeah, I’m here with my school,” he says.

The merman tilts his head. “Not anymore,” he says, then points up the hall.

There’s no one there.

“Shit!” Jason swears, then starts swimming up the hall in such a panic that when he finally finds his group again, two intersecting hallways later, he realises that he forgot to say goodbye. When he looks back down the hall, the merman (merboy?) is gone.

The unnamed kid sends him a weird look, but he just shrugs and the other guy shrugs back and Jason decides that he’s a pretty cool guy to get stuck in the back of the group with.

They start to enter a large domed room, and by the sheer height of the curved glass ceiling, Jason figures it’s the room at the center of the building that they saw from the outside.

“What’s going on?” he asks the same kid.

“We’re going to see some of their experiments,” he whispers back.

Turns out, there’s only one. Apparently the others are in separate rooms, either dead or lying in dormancy. This one is living and currently top research priority, caged in the room like a centerpiece. It’s green and resembles a lizard for the base of its body, with a torso like an eel. It stops looking like a lizard when, despite its four legs, the base of what should be the tail turns into eight tails, which resemble more closely to octopus tentacles than anything else. Along its spine is something that is similar to hair at first, although looks more like seaweed the longer Jason stares at it. Frankly, it’s weird enough that the sight of it makes him kind of uncomfortable. He wrinkles his nose in distaste.

Jason starts tuning out the scientists when they start rambling on about regeneration, his mind more preoccupied with the appearance of the oddly friendly merboy than whatever else is going on. The merboy has been the only aquatic person (are they still called a person if they’re not human?) to actually approach him other than the tour guides. Most of the city’s inhabitants seem content to completely avoid the group of humans, or otherwise look on in distrust. The way they act, one would think Jason personally dumped a gallon of oil on their heads.

Although, now that he thinks of it, he supposes he has. He winces and tunes back in to the rest of the presentation.

They enter the palace an hour later by request of Aquaman. Jason’s curiosity takes him a little further from the group in the tour of the main room of the palace, starring Aquaman’s golden throne. That’s why he doesn’t actually hear the explanation of what room they’re going into next, because he isn’t expecting to be put into a chamber that gets drained of water, only for it to open up into another room without water .

To his embarrassment, Jason actually tries to swim and lands flat on his face.

The kid next to him looks like he wants to laugh and Jason sends him the most venomous glare he can summon. Luckily they’re still at the back of the group and no one else seems to notice his pathetic flop.

While everyone in the group stumbles and attempts to remember how to operate under gravity like newborn calves, the Atlanteans smoothly adjust to the transition and stride forward like nothing has changed. Jason braces himself against the wall and stares after them.

Respect.

With an apologetic look, Kaldur’ahm turns to look at them. “From what I have gathered from my friends on the surface, human anatomy is not accustomed to eating the way we do here in Atlantis. Therefore, we have cleared this space of water in order to cook your meal in a way that I hope is similar to that of the surface world, although besides our King, I am the only frequent visitor of land, so I apologise for any inaccuracies.” When no one moves, he smiles and gestures to the table. “Please, make yourselves comfortable. You must be hungry after such a long trip, not to mention how much you have already had to listen to Tula speak.” Tula punches him in the shoulder for that when everyone’s attention on Kaldur’ahm has broken, and the playful gesture actually relaxes Jason more than anything else this entire trip so far has.

Now that Jason is looking, he and the others can see a long table set up in the middle of the room, laden with plates of lobster, mussels, clams, shrimp, seaweed, kelp, and types of fish that he can’t name because he’s never been one much for seafood. Once they get the hang of their feet, the rest of his classmates eagerly rush forward to claim seats next to their friends, leaving Jason and the unnamed boy as last to sit beside one another. The boy sends him a sheepish smile.

“I don’t think we’ve ever talked before? Uh. I’m Sebastian, but people usually either call me Seb or Ives,” he says, offering a hand out. Jason blinks for a second, taken aback by the fact that he’s actually being addressed, before remembering himself and accepting the handshake.

“Jason,” he says, then looks over the food. “Lobster is poisonous when it’s not cooked properly, right? So I’m guessing we should stay away from that.”

“I have no idea, but I’m not taking any chances,” Ives agrees, eyeing it suspiciously. There’s a beat of silence. “I’m going to be so sick of fish after this.”

Luckily, the food doesn’t seem to be accidentally poisoned, and it’s actually really good for the very little experience that Jason has had in terms of seafood. Alfred doesn’t make it all that much, so fortunately for the Atlanteans they aren’t competing with a whole lot.

Garth, Kaldur’ahm, and Tula are situated at the head of the table along with Miss Holloway, Navy-Guy, and the four other Seals accompanying them. The room is filled with a healthy amount of chatter, even if a lot of it echoes back and makes it seem louder than it really is. It quiets while people finish off their meal, and it’s in that moment that a girl across from Jason and Ives, with a nudge from her friend, looks up the table towards Kaldur’ahm.

“Uh, sorry, can I ask a question?” she calls out. The people around her quiet down curiously, and then everyone else follows suit. It causes her eyes to flick around in embarrassment.

“Of course,” Kaldur’ahm says with a smile.

“It’s kind of...dumb, I guess. Uh. I was--we were just wondering if...mermaids are real? I mean, we haven’t seen any, so..."

The three Atlanteans all pause at that and glance towards each other in surprise. Garth shrugs to whatever look Tula gives him, and the girl who asked the question fidgets. Kaldur’ahm nods to himself. “I had heard of the human fascination with merpeople. I apologise, it must have slipped my mind during our explanations of the types of races which live here. Yes, merpeople do exist -- however, there is only one who lives in Poseidonis.”

“Really?” the original speaker’s friend says, surprised. “What happened to the rest of them?”

“Nothing at all,” Kaldur’ahm assures her. “They simply don’t live here.” When Jason’s classmates continue to look confused, Kaldur’ahm regards them with a thoughtful look. “Tell me, what do you know of Atlantis?”

The girl doesn’t look too thrilled about being put on the spot, but she continues anyway, although she does glance to Miss Holloway as if to ask for help (there’s none to be had -- again, Jason’s favourite teacher). “Er, well, it used to be a continent above the ocean, but one day an earthquake happened and sunk everything into the ocean.”

“The Great Deluge,” Kaldur’ahm confirms with an encouraging nod.

“Yeah, but there were scientists who knew that it was coming and made a dome around Poseidonis, so everyone here survived until King Orin created technology to transform you guys so that you were able to breathe underwater, although that technology is lost or destroyed by now. Overtime, your bodies evolved to even better adapt, until you were so changed that you wouldn’t ever be able to live permanently on land again.”

All three Atlanteans smile approvingly. “Very good,” Kaldur’ahm says. “Out of curiosity, what is the human’s interpretation of the beginning of merpeople?”

When no one is forthcoming with an answer, Jason is surprised to see Ives raise a cautious hand. Tula nods at him, so he clears his throat. “We don’t really have an origin story that’s set in stone. Some different religions or cultures might, but mythology used to be part of religions that died a long time ago for us and no one believes them anymore, plus they’ve been told so many times that the stories are kind of blurred by now. In movies, sometimes they’re basically sirens. They’re supposed to be beautiful creatures who lure sailors into the water and to their deaths. Other times, they’re very kind and magical. They’re this big fantasy for humans. Artists like to draw them because they’re pretty, although they’re mostly just children’s tales by now.”

Kaldur’ahm gives a thoughtful hum. “It is interesting to me that you have not created a definite reason for their existence,” he comments. “In any case, we know the reason. As you all have learned, we were once human. This applies to the merpeople as well.”

He glances at Tula, as if asking her if she wants to tell the story, but she just gestures for him to go ahead, and he straightens up. Anyone still eating puts down their silverware in order to listen.

“Although you are correct in the overall scheme of things, many of the timings of your history are inaccurate. This applies especially to when the dome over Poseidonis was first erected. The dome was actually created in order to protect our people from enemies. During this time, there lived a great mystic named Shalako, who was devoted in his worship to Shuula, the goddess of the sky. When King Orin created the dome, Shalako vehemently protested, insisting that to shut the city away from the sky was a disgrace and an insult to Shuula. King Orin ignored him for sake of practicality. As for the earthquake that sunk Atlantis beneath the waves, it is unclear whether it was natural or orchestrated by Shuula herself as retribution, but when it occurred, the King’s dome remained as protection against the waters of the ocean, allowing those inside to survive while the thousands of Atlanteans outside perished.

“Shalako was one of those who survived, and as the years passed, many Atlanteans sought him out for spiritual guidance. Together they decided that Poseidonis was an unclean city due to its progression towards science instead of worship and chose to leave, and Shalako used his dark magic to create his own dome over the ruins of what was once Tritonis. They built the city from the ground up, and Shalako became its ruler. However, dark magic does not come without a price, and in exchange for his ability to erect the dome, he offered his own wife as sacrifice.

“Years later, a scientist from Poseidonis developed the serum which allowed us to breathe and survive underwater, and King Orin sought to share this with Shalako, who was his brother. But Shalako condemned the use of technology, as Tritonis is much more heavily involved in the mystics even to this day, and instead of accepting the help he felt that his brother was trying to unseat him as ruler. When Shalako rejected the serum, King Orin offered it to anyone who would accept. Much to Shalako’s shock and outrage, many of his followers did accept it. The followers became able to survive underwater without the protection of the dome, and enraged by their betrayal, Shalako called upon the dark gods to curse them. He mutilated their bodies into ugly mockeries of what he believed they chose to become. His followers, unaware of the cause of the curse, believed that the serum had failed them and blamed King Orin, until Shalako’s son, witness to the murder of his mother, revealed the truth. The cursed followers turned on him and destroyed everything he had, and then tracked him down and ran a stake through his heart.”

Kaldur’ahm pauses, evaluating the enraptured silence of his listeners.

“These cursed followers of Shalako became what you now know of as the Merpeople.”

Chapter Text

Jason wakes up slowly, sluggishly, and reluctantly. There’s no moment of confusion about where he is. The room is too cold for him to be at the Manor, after all. Alfred keeps it warm since he knows how much the cold reminds Jason of the streets.

He doesn’t mistaken where he is as the streets, either. The sheets of his bed are much too soft, and there’s a total silence that makes him clear his throat just to remind himself that he’s not deaf. He figures that an entire ocean on the outside of a room is enough to make it sufficiently soundproof.

He won’t admit it had taken him a while to fall asleep just because of the intimidating weight of the ocean above him. That, and he was trying to figure out how they were supposed to get a renewed supply of oxygen. Considering he isn’t dead yet, he figures the Atlanteans have it covered.

The rooms his classmates are sleeping in, one for the boys and one for the girls, are both rooms in Aqua-“Please, call me Arthur”-man’s palace. There’s a clock on the wall, and while Jason isn’t sure what time it follows, Kaldur-”He means King Arthur”-ahm told them that they were not to leave the room until Garth entered at exactly 08:00 because their pills wear off after prolonged exposure to dry air.

“Hey, wake up,” Jason says, turning over to poke at Ives, who’s sleeping in the bed beside him. All of the beds in the room have different furnishings, as if they were all taken from different rooms with different themes. They each have headboards decorated in curling and swirling shapes made of polished marble, silver, emerald, ruby, and gold, but decorated with different small stones, clams, coral, or plant designs. “Garth is coming in an hour.”

“Ugh,” Ives moans. “Leave me-- ow.”

Jason frowns at how he’s halted in rolling over onto his other side. “Oh my God,” the boy moans. “I’ve never been this sore in my life.”

Right. Hours of swimming. Jason rolls his eyes. “You’re such a baby.”

“I’m not semi-aquatic,” Ives hisses, and then quiets, presumably to go back to sleep.

Jason crosses his arms, stares at him for a moment, and then decides to get dressed while no one else is awake to notice his scars. He would normally curse Bruce for training his internal clock to get up at the same time of ungodly-early every day, but this time it comes in handy. A few people start to stir awake five to 8, but as it happens, he’s the only one sitting on his freshly made bed when Garth walks in from the water-draining chamber at exactly 08:00.

Jason can’t decide whether to look apologetic on behalf of his lazy classmates or smug that he’s the only one on time. Garth, at worst, looks amused. He shakes his head. “Honestly, I can relate. Maybe I’ll return in an hour.” He glances at the clock and then at a piece of laminated paper in his hands, as if debating whether or not their schedule will allow for an hour of leeway. “Although, it will be subtracted from your free period,” he muses out loud.

Hell no. Jason isn’t going to lose free time on behalf of a bunch of stupid civilians. “Hey fuckheads! Get your asses up!”

Garth looks taken aback. Jason doesn’t know if it’s from his blatant disregard of everyone’s beauty sleep or from his bad mouth. People are starting to stir, so he yells again, “Ahh! There’s a leak! We’re gonna drown!”

That gets people going. Garth tries to bite his lip and maintain a straight, disapproving face, but in the end he gives in to just looking smug. Jason decides that he likes him.

Jason figures that if not everyone hates him by then, they do now. He’s glared and grumbled at for the next three hours. Even Ives looks miffed. Garth, at least, seems to have warmed up to him. He thinks Garth likes him as much as he suddenly likes Garth. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad if he found out about his alter ego.

They’re given their free period after hours of learning to play underwater Atlantean sports in the training arenas. It’s starting to barely fall dark by then, but Poseidonis has an open layout and the fact that people can swim above the city and look down with a bird’s eye (whale’s eye?) view makes finding someone significantly easier, which also means they all get a much broader range of wandering than they would in a city on land. The darkness causes the bioluminescent organisms scattered around Poseidonis to blossom, glimmering gently and coalescing together to form a sea of languidly swaying light. Jason swims around for a bit just staring at all the glowing purple, green, and blue plants that he couldn’t name if he tried but gleam brilliantly. They shift with the water as if to wave hello.

The plankton far above the city glitter blue like a vast expanse of fairy lights, contrasting with the dazzling spots of red originating from plants on the outskirts of Poseidonis. He finds a place in what seems to be the city courtyard, surrounded by eroded stone that look to be styled after Greek architecture, and runs a hand over the soft tendrils of the leaves of the purple bush-like organisms brushing against his legs.

“What’s wrong?”

Jason jerks at the voice, whipping his head up to stare into the eyes of Poseidonis’ only merboy. He takes a moment to get over the scare -- ignoring the boy’s proud look because, give him a break, sound travels differently down here -- and register the merboy’s question. He frowns. “There’s nothing wrong,” he says.

“You look sad.”

Jason blinks in surprise. “I’m not sad,” he insists. “I was just...looking.”

“Looking?” the merboy echoes, drifting over to lay on the stone beside where Jason is sitting, his tail laid out behind him. “Looking at what?”

“All...this,” Jason says, gesturing with his arms helplessly at all the glowing plants and animals around them. “It looks like something straight out of a fairytale.”

“What’s a fairytale?”

Jason snorts. “This,” he responds eloquently.

They’re silent for a moment. “Does land not have plants?”

Jason rolls his eyes. “We have plants. They just don’t glow.”

“They don’t?”

“What are you, a parrot?”

“What’s a parrot?”

“Christ,” Jason sighs. “Nothing.”

“Is a parrot Christ or nothing?” the merboy asks, and Jason opens his mouth, ready to explain himself, when he catches the boy’s smirk. He huffs instead.

The merboy starts to hum after a while. Jason raises an eyebrow at him, and the merboy smiles when he realises that he’s garnered his complete attention. “Want to go on an adventure?”

Jason considers it. It’s dark, he’s on a school field trip, no one knows where he is… All in all, wandering off with a strange half-boy with a tail sounds like a terrible idea.

“Sure,” Jason agrees, because following through with terrible ideas is right up his alley.

They’re halfway through breaking into the empty science laboratory when Jason finally decides to ask what they’re doing.

“Breaking out of prison,” the merboy says, and Jason doesn’t really know what to do with that.

“What’s your name again?” he asks, because he’s trying to find a way to ask his next question as seriously as possible, but he can’t find the right tone of voice that doesn’t involve using the merboy’s name.

“Tim,” says the merboy, barely giving him a passing glance as he concentrates on staring at the door handle.

“Tim, how does breaking into a research center relate to breaking out of prison?” he says, then belatedly adds, “I’m Jason, by the way.”

But Tim just rolls his eyes like Jason is being totally ridiculous. “We’re not the ones breaking out of prison. We’re the ones breaking him out of prison. This is a rescue mission. Come on.” He abandons the door handle in favor of beckoning Jason towards the sky (...or, well, closer to the sky). They circle the dome head of the laboratory so that they’re swimming on the side that faces the open ocean instead of the city, less exposed like this to wandering eyes.

They reach the top and Tim plasters his face against the glass, fascinated. He pushes one finger towards the center of the room below, and Jason is startled to discover that his fingers are webbed. “He’s trapped.”

That’s when Jason realises what he’s really looking at.

“You want to rescue the lizard-thing?” Jason clarifies. When Tim nods, although it’s hesitant and slightly confused, he says: “Is it even still alive? They said it is, but it never moved when I was down there."

“He’s alive,” Tim says sadly, letting go of the edge of the wall in order to slowly sink back towards the ocean floor. Jason follows. “He’s in pain.”

“How can you tell?”

“I can’t,” clarifies Tim. “Garth told me. He’s in a long sleep now. He does that when he’s in pain. It’s like a defense-mechanism -- like the way my body goes into shock when it’s seriously injured.”

They reach the ocean floor and lean up against the wall in silence. Jason frowns out at the dark expanse of open ocean in front of them, at the point where the elevated floor drops away into dismal depths. Tim wrings his wrist. “They’re cutting away bits and pieces of him, slowly, to study. But they’re not finding anything except what they’ve already guessed, and he’s been there for weeks. He grows back all his body parts and right now, Garth told me that all they’re trying to do is find out how bad an injury has to be for it not to regenerate.”

Jason thinks back to the tour earlier in the day, with Garth in the lead until they reached the center room and he fell back so that he flanked the group. He kept glancing back at the lizard creature, but Jason thought it was just because he was fascinated, or trying to find confirmation of some of the things the scientists were talking about. He thought he had looked passive at the time, but then again, he’s starting to realise that most Atlanteans tend to look that way.

“The scientists said that they’re trying to figure out a way to incorporate the genetic information that allows the...lizard-thing to regenerate so that they can use it for medicine.”

“That’s what they said. But Garth thinks that they have enough body parts by now to study. We think they’re just keeping him around because they can. Who knows, maybe they’ll find something if they keep him. But it’s not right, and Garth agrees. It’s...cruel.”

“How does Garth know all this?” Jason asks finally, frowning now at the ground.

“He knows everything that happens here,” Tim answers matter-of-factly. “He’s really good friends with the King and Queen, and he’s in training to be Aqualad. Or was, anyway, until he rejected the responsibility. The King feels that science is very important, and stresses about that in their training, although if the Queen had her way, she probably wouldn’t bother. She’s always been more for the mystic arts.” He splays his fingers and starts rubbing the webs between them absentmindedly. Jason wonders if it’s a habit -- the human equivalent of biting nails. “He’s like the King. He can speak to marine animals. Garth can’t speak to him when he’s sleeping, but he can feel his emotions. We think he might be asking for help.”

Jason...didn’t know that, surprisingly. Well, he knew Garth can talk to animals, but he didn’t know that Garth can feel their emotions sometimes too. On one hand, he has this itching curiosity to ask Garth about what it was like, when he was abandoned and outcast for something out of his control -- but in a way, he feels like he already knows. He thinks that they could really get along, if only they had a way to truly, openly talk.

Yet, if Garth is anything like Jason… Open talk probably isn’t his forte. “Jesus,” he mutters.

Tim nods solemnly. But instead of staying solemn for long, he straightens up and turns to look Jason seriously in the eye. “But that’s why we’re going to rescue him.”

Jason contemplates that. “Is Garth in on it?”

Tim shrugs. “Yes, and no. He knows, and he agrees, but he can’t help me. He doesn’t want to get in trouble.” He smiles a mischievous grin. “But that’s okay -- I get in trouble all the time.”

With an expression like that, Jason doesn’t doubt it.

As it turns out, Tim the Merboy had wanted to break the lizard out of prison tonight (“His name is Poseidon,” he’d said after the third time Jason referred to the creature as ‘lizard-thing’. When asked if he was named after Greek mythology, Tim had no idea what Jason was referring to. He had just thought that the first half of the name of his city sounded cool). “But the handle never had that sensor on it before,” he claimed as they swam away to take up a station at a bench in front of a large mural -- one that wasn’t moving, although Jason had remained suspicious. “Garth told me that they might be updating security, but… Neither of us know why. I’m starting to think the scientists are paranoid of you surface-dwellers taking something.”

Tim wouldn’t tell Jason why he was even telling him all of this. Every answer was more or less something along the lines of, “Because you’re interesting.” Jason’s starting to think that the merboy doesn’t really know the answer, either.

But there’s nothing to be done about it tonight. Jason had tucked the information away into the back of his head to muse over later as their conversation slowly shifted focus to Atlantis as a whole. Jason wanted to know the details of every organism that they saw, of every magic being used and language being spoken and music being played. How do Atlanteans eat? Do merpeople eat different food from other Atlanteans? How big a role does racial prejudice play in a city where only half the population is the same species, and the other half is a mixing pot of multiple others? Most of the questions Tim didn’t know how to respond to, mainly because his knowledge of comparison is limited. So in the process of learning more about Atlantis, Tim got to learn more about Earth -- particularly Gotham.

Jason taught him that the pollution humans create isn’t limited to the ocean, and as well as toxifying the home of the Atlanteans, humans toxify their own home with clouds of smog and manmade radiation. He taught him about school and about work, about conflict with metahumans and the variation of politics, and about microwaves and how everything in a city revolves around the need for fire and electricity. But when Jason tried to switch from Atlanteans to merpeople, Tim shied away, avoiding the subject and redirecting attention back to the ugly of Gotham.

And the more Jason spoke -- about the homeless, about the crime, about the heroes, about the government, the more he realised how much simpler life seemed down in the ocean. In the ocean, where cities are few and far between, and populations are low enough that economy isn’t a large concern and people’s mindsets aren’t geared constantly towards bigger and better and tiptoeing along thin, imaginary lines.

Tim seemed to think so, too.

“Money is so important that you’re famous just for having it,” Jason says now, rubbing his thumb over a smooth pebble he found at his feet. “And your self-worth is determined by how expensive all the things you own is.”

“Like a dragon,” Tim says, matter-of-fact, and Jason stares partially because he doesn’t have any clue how the merboy knows what a dragon is.

And then he snorts because, “Yeah. Exactly like a dragon. We’re all just a bunch of petty and shallow dragons.”

Tim hums. “You don’t know petty and shallow until you’ve met a group of merpeople,” he points out. Jason carefully prompts him to go on, because this is the most Tim has divulged about his species and he isn’t about to waste his chance.

Tim slumps further down on their shared bench with a sigh. According to him, sitting up like an Atlantean or human is actually very uncomfortable. The bottom half of his body is insanely flexible, courtesy of his extra small bones, but on the flipside, none of the bones in his tail can create enough support to hold the upper half of his body for prolonged periods of time.

“Appearance is everything. Whose tail has the most vivid colour, how many hours they spent shining their scales, how hard their skin is, how long their fins are. Do their eyes match their tail? And don’t get me started on the gossip. I’m telling you, no one has anything better to do than butt into everyone else’s lives. Do you think so-and-so is going to propose to so-and-so? Did you see how disrespectful Person A is to her mother? Wow, he’s so uncivilised -- did you see how he left the house without cleaning his fins? Oh, I think last night I overheard the family next door having an argument. They must all hate each other or something.”

Jason raises an eyebrow. “You’re a merperson, you know.”

“Barely,” Tim says with a roll of his eyes. “According to them, at least. Or so I bet. I left Tritonis when I was a little fish. King Arthur brought me in, said Poseidonis is always welcome to merpeople even if we never want to come. I think he feels like Poseidonis owes something to us for what happened all those thousands of years ago.”

“You guys don’t sound much different from us in that respect, honestly,” Jason admits. He wants to ask Tim what happened, why he left Tritonis at all, but he’s afraid to push.

“That’s not a good thing.”

“What part of this entire conversation makes you think I’m trying to sell humans off as good?”

Tim smiles. A small ocean current sweeps by and brushes the hair from his face, back like a new trendy teen boy haircut.

Jason resolutely does not look down, and as much as he’s talked, his struggles to keep his eyes up have stayed constantly at the forefront of his mind for the entire duration that he’s been in Tim’s company. It reminds him uncomfortably of every time that a streetwalker who knew him by name (although he didn’t know them) would ruffle his hair and tell him to stay in school as a child, and how he tended to recognise a woman the next time he saw her by how big her cleavage was. It wasn’t even inappropriate -- it was just a fascination, wondering how they stayed in a shirt or if jumping up and down hurt. Sometimes, he wasn’t even thinking about how it felt to have boobs like a girl, he just couldn’t stop staring because they were so round and right there and he had nothing to say about them except that they looked squishy.

In all honesty, this situation isn’t much different, except Jason’s eyes keep being drawn down significantly lower than the chest and there’s no possible way he could get away with staring. Tim’s tail is so red, though, that the splash of intense colour is constantly hovering at his peripheral, just begging him to tilt his head and get a better look. He wants to know first hand if the scales are slick like a fish’s or rough like shark’s skin, if they’re hard like a dragon’s should be or soft like a snake’s, if they’re sharp like cat fangs or dull like human teeth.

“Why did you leave?” Jason asks, instead of the question he wants to ask. Tim runs his hand over his tail subconsciously. It seems to be a nervous habit and draws Jason’s eyes back down without his permission.

“My dad was a scientist,” says Tim, and Jason is surprised that it didn’t require more coaxing. “But scientists aren’t well-liked in Tritonis. This is the city of science. It’s the only place he could research and support us at the same time.”

Jason notes the past tense, and his mind spirals into thinking about the failures of his own parents, enough so that he misses that he hasn’t responded. Tim tilts his head at him, and when he glances back up, he notes that the merboy’s eyes are larger than a human’s. Or maybe that’s just a trick of the light.

Tim looks confused at first, but then understanding seems to dawn. “Do you want to touch?”

It takes him a moment to understand, and when he does, he freezes up. He’s not sure what the etiquette is for something like this. Is it an offer only to be polite? Humans don’t go around petting each other’s legs, is it weird for merpeople too? But when he goes without replying, Tim grasps his wrist and brings it to where Jason thinks his knees might be, if he had any.

It’s slick like a fish, but not slimy, and the scales feel hard like bone at first until he presses down at the tips and realise that they mold to the shape of his hand, compressing just so and flexible enough not to break. The ends aren’t sharp, although they look it.

They shimmer when they move, catching different shades and colours of bioluminescent light around them, and they may be red but they’re reflective enough that Jason feels like he could find a color from every part of the rainbow if he searched hard enough.

After a nod of permission from Tim, Jason brings his hands to his fins, and the base reminds him of cartilage. Flexible, but thick and still tough. At the ends, they transition into something like silk, so soft that Jason can hardly feel it as it flows between his fingers in the ocean water.

Throughout it all, Tim watches Jason watching him, remaining so still and silent that he forgets there are eyes on him. It isn’t until he removes his hand and goes to touch the merboy’s hip, where the scales pepper out from his tail onto his human half, transition so elegantly into skin and blood, that he snaps back to himself. There’s no time in the world when Jason could forget that touching someone’s hips is inappropriate.

“Sorry,” he says awkwardly, quietly, putting hs hands back in his lap. Tim beams, unbothered.

“It’s okay,” he chirps. “It’s nice to have someone touch them again. Merpeople like to clean each other’s tails, so there’s lots of touching involved, but it’s been awhile since anyone wanted to get close enough. Why did you stop?”

Jason has no idea if he’s able to blush in cold water. He hopes not. “It’s...not, uh, appropriate? To touch someone below the waist. For humans. If, y’know. They’re not together.”

“Why not?”

Why is Jason the one who has to do this? It’s just his luck. “Well, legs are… different.” At Tim’s unblinking face, he continues. “They just are.”

Tim must realise how uncomfortable he is, because he doesn’t press. Instead, he says: “For us, it’s our back and neck that only someone you truly trust can touch.”

“Same for us, but that’s for the same reasons as the legs. Why is it that way for you?”

Tim looks at him oddly. “Because someone you don’t trust can easily kill you from there, duh.”

“Oh.”

“Can you touch each other anywhere ?”

“Yeah,” Jason says. When Tim makes a ‘go on’ gesture, he continues: “The hands and arms. And… neck and waist if you’re going for a hug. But only for a hug. Otherwise that’s just weird. Shoulders too. And the top of the head.”

Tim looks increasingly disturbed. “Why would you even want to touch someone’s arms or shoulders?”

“We can cuddle and hug and stuff, too,” Jason says, a little defensively. “And we use our arms for basically everything. We hold hands. Like this.” He goes to demonstrate, goes as far as picking up Tim’s wrist, and then realises Tim has webs between his fingers. “Oh,” he finishes awkwardly. He demonstrates on his own hands. “We do something like this with each other’s fingers.”

Tim laughs. Jason doesn’t know why he’s laughing. “Surface-dwellers are weird,” he says.

“Yeah, well,” Jason agrees, trying to shrug the whole situation off. “Your face is weird.”

Tim only laughs harder.

Jason had accidentally stayed out too late to talk to Tim, which meant that a small search party was sent to find him. As a result, he has to keep to the buddy system for the rest of the trip. Ives is to be said buddy.

“What were you doing, anyway?” he says now as they swim towards the museum. Jason still isn’t sure what kind of museum it’s supposed to be. A little bit of everything, he supposes. Most of it is in the open, a garden with chipped statues meticulously cleaned of algae and magical artifacts sealed behind glass. Most of his classmates think the magical artifacts aren’t real, but from what he knows about Atlanteans, he doesn’t have the same doubts. Noting the gold paved path, he wonders if this is where all that missing Spanish gold went.

“Taking advantage of that cultural exchange thing,” Jason replies as they pass under a crumbling marble archway.

“Wow, saying it like that makes me really believe you.”

Jason side-eyes him. “Are you this sarcastic to everyone you first meet?”

“It depends.”

“On what?”

“Not sure. It just does,” Ives says, and Jason rolls his eyes.

He wants to see Tim again. He was thinking about it when he went to bed that night and it’s the first thought he had in the morning. All throughout their tour, he’s been peering around the city, into every corner they pass and every shadow they see. But there’s no merboy to be found.

“Are you okay?” asks Ives, and Jason fights the urge to sigh.

“Yeah, there’s just a lot to take in.”

Mostly, he’s been thinking about how to get into the lab. The science laboratory isn’t exactly filled with state secrets, so there aren’t any security guards. According to Tim, the security used to be rather minimal, but that was before they decided to start admitting so many strangers to have a look around. Jason didn’t see any cameras when he was in there, but he doubts that Atlantean technology would look exactly like surface technology anyway. Maybe they’re hidden?

“I wish there was a gift shop,” Ives says as they approach a part of the museum set aside for items collected from the ‘open water’. None of the humans here are under the impression that the items are not from sunken ships, but no one actually wants to say anything, and the tour guide is eager to be vague. Jason wonders how the politics of ownership would even work if someone tried to claim something as familiar to a particular country. A mess, to be sure. “I could buy a necklace and then give it to whoever I marry in the future and get to say that yes it is, in fact, straight from Atlantis.”

“We don’t have any money here,” Jason points out. Atlanteans use coins as a form of trade, but the coins are not only backed by gold, they’re partially made from gold. The King, being from the surface himself, was very specific about keeping it out of the hands of visiting humans. There’s no way to exchange currency because it would take an absurd amount of money to match up to even one Atlantean coin and, most importantly, paper money isn’t waterproof. “And there aren’t enough tourists for a gift shop.”

“No shit, Sherlock. I can still wish. This place is so freaking cool.”

“Well, it’s the lost city of Atlantis.”

“ Duh. But I actually meant the museum. Look at this!” Ives exclaims, pointing to the gigantic green statue of what looks like Poseidon, but could probably just as easily be Aquaman. He doesn’t know anymore.

It’s impressive, but Jason’s too distracted to really appreciate it. “I know.”

“No, you don’t,” Ives says with a sigh. “If this isn’t cool for you, where do you want to see?”

He doesn’t even have to think about it. “The lab.”

Ives looks at him like he’s crazy. “Please don’t tell me you mean the science lab. That place is great and all, super interesting, but if I have to hear another know-it-all fish-man tell me about how superior Poseidonis to every other city ever, I’ll shoot myself.”

“The science is interesting,” Jason insists.

“It was for the first five hours. I’m not going back.”

“I didn’t say you had to.”

“ You want to go back, right?”

“Well, yeah.”

“Then you need a buddy, and trust me when I say that there isn’t a single person in this group who’s going to want to spend their free time in that place,” Ives says with finality.

Jason hasn’t really thought that far ahead.

He needs to go back there and take another look around, see if there are any obvious cameras that he can spot. He didn’t think that he was going to try B&E when he was on the tour, after all.

“We can spend half of our time here and half of it there?”

“Nope.”

“Come on! That’s fair.”

“It’s really not. We spent half of a day over there and this is the first time we’ve go to see anything that wasn’t dead animals, machines, and people who talk too much.”

“I meant half of our free period. We’re still on the tour. So technically--”

“Not happening.”

“Please.”

“No.”

“What’s going on?”

Ives and Jason turn their heads to see Garth himself watching them. He must have stopped swimming and let the rest of the group go ahead and overheard the teenagers arguing. Ives looks suitably humbled in his presence -- he may not know just how high up Garth is in ‘status’ around here, but even just the fact that he’s Atlantean is enough for Ives to look at him in awe. Jason, on the other hand, is used to being around people far out of his league (two words: Wonder Woman), and feels comfortable enough to complain. “He doesn’t want to be my buddy.”

“I didn’t say that!”

Jason rolls his eyes. “We don’t agree on where to go for free period.”

“The science lab is boring -- no offense! I mean, it’s just, we’ve already seen it and…”

“So? You can never learn too much--”

But by now, Ives looks embarrassed. Jason almost feels bad. “Fine, fine. We can go to both.” He mumbles at the end, not looking Garth in the eyes, but obviously speaking more for the Atlantean than Jason.

And yet, Garth only gives a small smile at the argument. “That’s alright. There’s a lot more to see in Poseidonis than a bunch of grumpy nerds trapped indoors. How about you go join someone else’s group and I can give your friend another tour?”

Jason eyes Garth suspiciously as Ives immediately perks up. “Okay!” he says gratefully. “I’m Ives, by the way. This is Jason.”

“Nice to meet you both.”

Ives beams at him and quickly swims away. Jason is almost offended.

“Don’t you have better things to do?” Jason asks. He means it out of genuine curiosity, but it’s only once the words are out of his mouth that he realises how rude they are. Garth doesn’t seem phased, however.

“This is better things,” he says matter-of-factly. “My only job right now is to help supervise the group, and Tula and Kaldur seem to have most of it covered.”

There’s a museum guide up front talking about the artifacts that they pass at large to the group, most of whom, to Jason’s surprise, seem to actually be listening. The two other Atlanteans are flanking the group, likely answering questions without interrupting the flow of the tour guide’s speech. Kaldur’ahm is nodding and smiling to something that the girl from yesterday, the one who asked about mermaids, is saying, and Tula is holding an orb of light in her hands. The trio of kids she’s talking to are the only ones definitely too distracted to pay attention to the history around them.

“So you like science, huh?” Garth asks, and Jason desperately tries to remember if his file said anything about being a science geek, because if so, Jason is about to be caught red handed.

“Yeah,” he says neutrally. Garth hums and nods.

“I never got that into it,” he says, and Jason breathes a sigh of relief. “I’ve always been more into the mystics myself.”

He doesn’t know how Bruce does it. How the man knows so much about everyone and manages to keep the fact hidden. The moment Garth says that, Jason instantly wants to ask questions. How long did it take him to learn the mystics? Does he think his tribe will welcome him back? Does he want to go back? Does he care? Are his people, if he even considers them his people, still paranoid of those with violet eyes, the Idyllist mark of power? Jason looks into Garth’s face, into his eyes where a ring of violet almost looks black in the shadow, and wonders how anyone could look at eyes like that with fear instead of awe.

There’s a power rush in knowing more than what others know, and a sickness in it too.

“Tula mentioned that you’re a mystics student?”

Garth nods. “We both are. Kaldur once, too. We learn under the Queen’s guidance. She’s a wonderful teacher. I thought humans didn’t believe in the mystics?”

“It’s more like a 50/50,” Jason says. “Most humans have a religion, so magic isn’t all that farfetched when you think about it.”

“And you?”

“I’m in an invisible city filled with people who can control the water and breathe it at the same time. If they tell me magic is real, magic is fucking real.”

Garth laughs. “Fair enough.”

Their free period isn’t all that long in coming, and Jason is about to immediately head off to the lab when Garth suggests resting. He’s confused at first, until he realises that all his classmates seem like they can barely keep moving -- swimming is an intense workout, and he doesn’t doubt he’ll be paying for it in a few days -- but he’s not super keen on wasting his time just sitting around, so they get lunch.

Garth is a good conversationalist, maybe better than Kaldur’ahm, and a lot less strict. Kaldur’ahm is kind, patient, and wise, whereas Garth seems to be more on Jason’s wavelength. He isn’t initially sarcastic, but Jason is sarcastic enough to the point that by the end of lunch, he’s picked up on it. He understands how to take a joke more than Jason was expecting for an Atlantean (they all seem really uptight, in his opinion), and, most importantly, he’s a ton more lax about the rules.

It’s important because it’s once they get to the lab that he realises he hadn’t fooled Garth for a moment.

“Everyone will talk about the harnessing of magic, for battle and for art, but it’s actually the scientific minds and technology that’s the pride of our city,” he says as they enter the engineering wing, which hadn’t been part of the initial tour. This particular room has a glass case in the center with what looks like a slightly different version of the underwater vehicles they had used to travel into the city. A prototype to increase the speed and durability of the vehicle, according to Garth. Currently, they require constant maintenance due to the tendency of algae to crawl into the gears and clog them up. “That’s why we make sure our security is up to date.”

Jason tries not to look too interested. “What kind of security?” he asks, not looking Garth in the eyes and instead pretending to be abnormally interested in the way the prototype looks.

“Nothing unusual to what you have on the surface, or so I’ve heard. The security controls are in a small separate building off to the eastern side, though, because there wasn’t any space left in the building itself when we decided to implement them.”

Jason wants to laugh, but he has to keep up the act. Luckily, he thinks Garth looks just as secretly amused as he is.

In the end, the time spent at the laboratory is short, although Jason does learn a lot about underwater mechanical engineering that he hopes he can use to surprise Bruce later. On their way out, they find Tim waiting for them. He’s sprawled all over an entire bench, his fins flicking lazily as he rests his chin in his arms. When he sees them, he perks up and immediately shoots off the bench to greet them.

“Jason!” he exclaims, grinning happily. “Oh, and you too,” he says to Garth.

Garth laughs at him and ruffles his hair. “What’s up, Timbo?”

“Not much, just wanted to show the tourist around a little,” he says innocently. Too innocently.

Garth’s eyebrows shoot up his forehead. “That’s unfortunate, because you already got him in trouble one too many times. The kid has to stay with me.”

Tim does, actually, look devastated. For about a moment. But then there’s a twinkle in his eye that Jason bets means trouble, if Garth’s expression has anything to say about it. Tim’s expression morphs into one that...sort of reminds Jason of a child dropping their ice cream cone. He slumps as his tail curls up so that he can start fiddling with the fins. “I actually have something I want to tell Jason. I… It’s kind of personal? I don’t… I mean, you’re awesome! You’re a really good friend of mine, but… It’ll only take a second. Please?”

Garth looks at Tim like he knows exactly what he’s doing and is entertained by it. “And where do you plan on going?”

“The caves.”

In sync, Tim and Garth start swimming further away from the main streets, towards the edge of the city. Jason can see the ocean floor drop away in the near distance, where the plants pepper off, far enough that the lights of the city barely reach.

“I don’t know, Tim…”

“You won’t even notice he’s gone, swear!”

When Jason turns back to the conversation, Garth is giving an exasperated half-smile and Tim looks triumphant. “Make it quick, okay?” He looks around for a moment until he spots one of the lights lining the path of the street. It looks like a swirling ball of glowing blue water -- like something out of Avatar: The Last Airbender , and about the size of a basketball. Garth picks it up from where it hovers softly off the ground and gives it to Tim.

“Okay!” And, without further ado, Tim grabs Jason wrist and starts swimming at an absurd speed for the cliff.

“Woah!” Jason exclaims, not even getting enough time to say bye to Garth. He didn’t know merpeople could swim so fast. Is it faster than the other Atlanteans? It would make sense -- they do have actual tails, but his neck is starting to hurt with how craned it is, the water dragging it back against his efforts. “Where are we going?” he asks, but the water is rushing past his ears too fast for him to hear Tim’s response.

They don’t slow down once they reach the cliff. Instead, Tim dives straight down, and Jason stares transfixed at where he can’t see the bottom, feeling fear creep into his pounding chest.

He’s never been particularly fond of the water. He hadn’t left the city limits until Bruce took him in, and the murky depths of Gotham’s Harbor were never appealing for swimming, not to mention that he only knew enough about swimming to keep his head above water before he became Robin. But the few times that he did take a dive into the river off Sheldon Park, he had always panicked at how he never knew what was below his feet. Heights don’t faze him, especially not now, but at least when he’s perched on rooftops he knows exactly what’s below. In water, especially water at night when it looks like nothing more than slippery, clinging oil, who knows what could be lurking?

And for the ocean, the fear is justified. Jason doesn’t know what the Atlantean magic/science infused marbles did for his ears, but they’ve felt fine despite the prolonged duration of submersion in water. Now, going down at speeds Jason would never be able to achieve on foot, he feels the pressure increase minutely in his ears like the lesser version of when a plane just begins to land. Jason is all too aware of the weight of the ocean literally on his shoulders.

Tim is unfazed -- or maybe he’s used to it. He leads them down for a few minutes and then brings them to the ledge face, which has been surprisingly straight for most of the way so far but far from smooth. Still, it’s been obviously eroded away, softened with red algae in some places and weathered in others by currents pushing subtly against them for so many thousand years.

There’s still one part that makes an obvious alcove, and Jason only sees it once they go below and finally look up. Looking down from above, an outcrop covers the depression in the rock from prying eyes. But here, Jason can see the entrance to a cavern.

Tim makes it through the small opening just fine. It’s Jason that gets stuck. The merboy stares incredulously. “You’re not that much bigger than me,” he protests.

Jason glares. “I have a butt. And hips."

“So do I!”

“Human butts and hips are big because we actually use them. You just...flap your cursed toes and do the underwater worm. You can’t convince me you have a butt. You’re the most curveless thing in the entire ocean.”

“I--”

“Do you have songs?”

Tim stares. “What?”

“Do you have songs? No? I didn’t think so. We do. We have entire songs about big butts and wide hips, so you can just swim away with all your denial because human curves are so out of your league it’s not even funny.”

There’s a moment of silence as Jason continues to struggle. He’s getting through, one inch at a time. But then Tim speaks, and when Jason looks up he’s irritated to find that the merboy is definitely entertained. The glowing blue orb in his hands puts an unnecessary spotlight on the expression. “How do you ‘do’ an underwater worm?” he finally asks.

Eventually, Jason makes it through, and they continue into the surprisingly spacious cavern. The light in Tim’s hands almost seems to expand in a desperate attempt to reach all the walls, casting everything in a beautiful blue glow. The rock ledges here haven’t been eroded as the water is entirely still. There’s something humbling about it, about drifting in the middle of a pocket formed by rock walls, enclosing him all around. He feels more comfortable here than he did in the open expanse of the ocean.

Tim watches him with a smile. “Why are you showing me this?” Jason asks when he finally regains his ability to speak. Instead of answering, the merboy starts to swim for where the cavern narrows into what looks to be a corridor. He hasn’t let go of his hand, but for comfort’s sake, Jason changes the grip so that both of their fingers are cupped into each other’s palms. This way, he’s being guided rather than dragged along.

In the new cavern, small pockets of light are being let through by clusters of holes in the rock wall that neither of them would have been able to fit through. But with the appearance of more light, the blue light in Tim’s hands seems to shrink back and leave room for the rays -- Jason didn’t realise how much light there was reaching this far into the water until he was cut off from it all -- and the sight is subtle but stunning. Jason deliberately switches directions so that they pass through every ray, and he marvels at the way the blue light dances over his own pale skin.

Tim stops in front of the opening to a much darker corridor.

“How far do these go?” Jason asks.

“Far,” Tim responds. “Very, very far. The furthest I’ve gone was enough so that when I exited, I could no longer see the city in any direction. I’m lucky that I remembered to always take the leftmost corridor at every split.”

“Wow…,” Jason whispers, taking a moment to try and picture the sheer network they’re currently swimming within.

“We’re not alone,” Tim says, and it’s creepy enough of a statement (Jason hears it all the time from Batman, and it’s never followed by anything good) that he does a double take. Tim doesn’t seem to notice his alarm. “There are fish and insects and worms and other creatures I’ve never seen before crawling all over the walls. Not this close to the entrance, but in there, and the deeper you go the more they show up. I think most of them might be blind, which is good for them because they’re really ugly.”

“Why the hell did you go in there then?” Jason asks, simultaneously disgusted and awed. “What’s wrong with you?”

“Everything,” Tim chirps happily. “But I wanted to show you because I think this is where we can put Poseidon.”

Jason looks around skeptically. “What does he eat, though?”

“Insects and fish. It would only be temporary, until people stopped looking for him. They think he used to live at the bottom of the ocean, and that’s a long ways off from here through a lot of open water. Garth knows these caves even better than I do. He could take Poseidon through them so he doesn’t get lost.”

“You’re really serious about this,” Jason says.

“Of course,” replies Tim. “You still want to do this, right? With me?”

“Duh. I’m not a quitter.”

Tim’s smile grows briefly, until it morphs into something more sheepish, and that makes Jason more cautious than any of his other mischievous expressions so far. “In that case… you know, I’ve been thinking about how we could get into the lab? The sensors on the door are both fingerprint and card scanners, so it’s not like we could just pick the lock. So… I was thinking that we could maybe wait outside until the last employee leaves for the night. And then… knock them out and use their card and hand to get in?”

Jason stares at him for a moment. “I can’t decide if that would qualify as kidnapping, assault, or both.”

“Both, probably.”

“And the cameras?”

“There’s cameras?” Tim says in disbelief. “How do you even know that?”

Jason grins. “A mutual friend. You weren’t the only one thinking. Luckily, I have a plan.”

Chapter Text

They have to work quick, because tonight is the last night Jason’s class is staying in Atlantis. Three days is far too short of a time to explore an entire culture, but it has more to do with the physical endurance of his classmates than money or anything else of importance. Simply put, even the athletic kids are already struggling against the gravity of their sleeping rooms with the exhaustion their muscles are experiencing. Even Jason’s feeling the strain, and he’s been pushing his muscles to their limits since Bruce adopted him.

Tomorrow morning they’ll sit and watch a few presentations and attend the annual music festival, where there will be a couple dance and music shows, and then they’ll be on their way to the sub to take them back to the surface by evening.

The problem is, when everyone is starting to settle in for bed and Jason is peeling his wet suit off with relief, he realises that Kaldur’ahm never actually specified how long the exposure to dry air has to be for their underwater abilities to wear off. He feels himself start to panic and his eyes dart to the water draining chamber, wondering if he can sneak out without anyone noticing.

Garth, standing near the chamber, notices. Their eyes meet, and Garth looks confused for a moment until realisation dawns on his face. Jason wonders just how much the Atlantean is in on things when the man turns around and disappears back into the chamber.

Jason is putting on sweatpants and halfheartedly trying to find his toothbrush, he knew he left it by his bed, when someone stops in front of him. He looks up to see Garth holding it out. “I believe this is yours,” he says. The moment Jason touches the bristles, Garth let's go and moves to quickly drop something into the palm of his hand, cool like a dewdrop.

Before he can say a word, Garth turns casually back around to help Kaldur’ahm with sorting out stray belongings.

Jason doesn’t open his palm. He keeps his hand firmly fisted and hidden under the covers until finally the rest of his classmates settle in and the lights turn off. Even then, he has to wait at least thirty minutes for the talking to stop, and then another hour just for good measure. By the time he slowly creeps from his bed, he feels antsy and anxiously hopes Tim doesn’t think he abandoned him.

He uncurls his fist to reveal the two small marbles, one clear and one milky, that are rapidly becoming very familiar to him, swallowing one and placing the other under his tongue until dissolved. He puts his wetsuit back on, making a face at the feeling of donning the sodden fabric so soon, and closes the chamber door quietly behind him.

Tim is waiting for him in the shadows of the courtyard. Before Jason is spotted, he can see the way Tim nervously rubs his fins between his fingers and bites his lip, staring down at the ground. When he calls out, Tim’s tense posture melts away and the merboy swims rapidly up to him. “You ready?” Jason whispers.

“Are you?” Tim whispers back. “That took forever.”

Jason shrugs apologetically. “I was paranoid.”

It takes them a while to find the monitor room, mainly because Jason was expecting something cooler than the equivalent of a shed. It’s the only structure around that doesn’t look like ancient Greece tried to crawl its way to the 21st century. The small building is entirely modern in the way that a depressing community center is -- four grey, unlabelled, windowless walls simultaneously inconspicuous and suspicious enough to make someone question if they’re in the right place.

“I don’t know how you plan to sneak into there when you’re the slowest swimmer I’ve ever seen,” Tim says as they hide around the corner of a building beside it. “I was going to compare you to some insulting animal but I couldn’t think of one as slow as you. A whale? Does a whale work? Is it insulting enough?”

“Shut up,” Jason hisses. “Not everyone is semi-aquatic.”

“What part of having a tail makes you think I’m only semi- aquatic?”

“The half human part.”

“Nuh-uh, nope,” Tim immediately protests. “Not half human. You’re just half mer.”

“What? No. Definitely not. Humans came first.”

“Fish came first.”

“You’re not a fish.”

“But I also live in the ocean,” Tim says, and Jason is so thrown by the non sequitur that he can only gape. That it, until Tim grins his toothy grin and Jason realises he’s being riled up on purpose.

“Do you just really love arguing?”

Tim dramatically widens his eyes and blinks them owlishly. “How could you tell?”

“Shhh,” Jason hisses all of a sudden and, surprisingly enough, Tim does. They both watch as a man starts to open the front door of the monitor room. There’s only a small gap between the building they’re hiding behind and the back of the monitor room. “How fast can you get us there?” he whispers to Tim. The merboy doesn’t answer, just grabs Jason by the wrist and swims them to the spot he pointed to while the Atlantean swimming out of the building is turned away.

Jason waits until he ducks his head in to say something about a lunch break to someone else inside in order to sneak up within a foot of him. The moment the door shuts, Tim grabs the Atlantean from behind. Jason had clasped onto Tim’s forearm as the merboy shot forward, so he gets there just as quickly and presses the pressure point in the neck that Batman taught him last month. He wasn’t sure of the anatomy, but luckily the Atlantean goes limp as desired within a few moments.

“You don’t think he saw who grabbed him, did you?” Tim says with worry.

“Did he see your tail?”

Tim stares at his tail as if it’ll give him all the answers. “I...don’t think so.”

“That’s reassuring,” Jason responds and snags the key card from where it’s floating in the water.

“How did you do that?” Tim asks when he realises the Atlantean in his arms is well and truly unconscious.

“Shh,” Jason says, even though no one is coming, because he doesn’t know how to answer that. Fortunately, Tim complies anyway. “There’s still another one inside.”

They’re silent as they think. During that time, Tim continues to hold the Atlantean, and when an idea occurs to him he thrusts the body into Jason’s arms. “Here,” he says unnecessarily, shoves Jason back around the corner, grabs the keycard, and starts pounding loudly on the door. Startled, Jason shrinks back into the shadows and listens. He hears the door open.

“Hi!” Tim greets. “Excuse me!” he continues as he abruptly shoves past the very confused guard.

“Wait, you can’t go back there--” the guard protests, and Jason hears the sound of another door opening.

“Nope, not here!” Tim exclaims.

“What isn’t here?”

“My-- oh!”

“What?”

“Look at this!”

Their voices get more distant as the guard says, “I don’t know what you’re--”

And just as suddenly as it had all begun, a door slams shut and the front door is opening again to reveal Tim’s lively face. He’s breathless, probably from adrenaline, and he’s sporting a wide grin and excited blue eyes. Jason can hear the guard shouting and pounding a door with his fists as Tim says, “I wonder how long it’ll take for someone to hear him?”

Bewildered, Jason gives the unconscious body still in his arms to Tim when he reaches out, and follows the merboy into the monitor room. The body is set down in a corner, positioned comfortably so that he won’t wake up with a kink in his neck. Jason does his best to ignore the shouting from what seems to be the closet as he focuses on the screens.

He looks down at the keyboard covered in symbols that he can’t understand. He worries for a second that whatever that has been translating his speech has worn off, but he’s reassured when Tim swims over to his shoulder and asks, “What’s wrong?”

“Uh…,” Jason begins eloquently.

There’s a beat of silence. “You don’t know how to turn off the cameras, do you?”

“No?”

“Well,” Tim begins, glancing casually back at the closet. They both stare as the door shakes. “There isn’t anyone guarding them anyway?”

“But we’ll be recorded.”

“You don’t have to come with if you don’t want to,” Tim says. “I can get Poseidon on my own. Mr. Hissy Fit already saw my face. And tail.”

Jason considers it. He’s not sure what Atlantean prison is like, or what the sentence would be for ‘stealing’ a science experiment (and assaulting two guards, and B&E), but he doesn’t want to just ditch Tim when he already said that he was going to follow through. On the other hand, he doesn’t want to piss off Bruce by possibly causing an international incident.

Oh shit.

If he were put in jail in the ocean, it would be an international incident, wouldn’t it?

He can see the headlines now: JASON TODD -- The First Teenager To Get Arrested For Stupid Shit In Atlantis.

It has a nice ring to it.

Being the first to do something for once would be cool.

“Jason?”

“I probably shouldn’t come,” Jason says guiltily, but Tim doesn’t look put out. He only nods. “I’ll stay here and watch to make sure you make it out okay.”

He does help Tim break into the lab, at the very least, by grabbing the unconscious body for him. They go to the entrance to scan the card and the guard’s fingerprints. Jason returns the monitor room alone with a plus one of limp Atlantean.

According to the cameras in the monitor room, the halls of the lab and the domed room are empty, which is the important part. Still, sitting slumped in the chair and watching boredly makes Jason feel utterly useless. The man in the closet has fallen mostly silent by now.

“What are you kids doing?” he demands, once Jason thinks he might actually get some peace and quiet. The guard sounds pissed. Jason really hopes he doesn’t break the door down until he leaves. Atlanteans are far stronger than humans (luckily, so are their doors).

“It was the merboy’s idea,” he  says, because he feels like he has to say it to at least one other person.

“Who are you? What are you doing? Let me out right now!”

“Great conversationalist,” he mutters as he goes back to watching the monitors.

Jason is waiting by the entrance to the lab when Tim bursts out, an entire damn cage in his arms, and rockets past. “Go, go, go!” he whisper-shouts, beelining towards the city limits.

Poseidon is still unconscious in his cage, which is impressive because the poor creature is now shoved up in a bundle of limp limbs against the back of the cage with how fast the merboy is swimming. He feels bad for the little guy. He relates all too much, since Tim once more grabbed onto his wrist and is now dragging him along for the ride as well.

“Is someone after us?” Jason asks, looking back at the lab entrance with dread.

“No, but there’s no way that guard’s door is holding up for much longer!”

That’s definitely true. Jason hadn’t only left the room because Tim was almost done. He was also getting worried with the sounds the door was making as the guard pounded his fists into it.

He’s surprised that they’ve already gone this long without getting swarmed with the Atlantean equivalent of police. The guard likely didn’t have a radio or communicator on his person, which Jason will forever be grateful for.

He has to turn his head away from the rush of water and, as Tim dives down, he tries not to grimace at the feeling of the pressure outside his ears increasing. They make it into the cave in record time, and Jason startles when he sees that they aren’t alone.

“Is everything okay?” Garth asks in alarm as they rush in, breathless.

Tim nods quickly. “Yeah, just-- here!” he exclaims as he thrusts the cage into Garth’s free arm, the one not holding a blue orb of light.

“It’s adrenaline,” Jason explains, feeling it shoot up in his own chest as well. He thought he’d be used to this sort of thing by now.

Garth nods, barely acknowledging that it’s Jason in front of him -- no “how do you do?” or “thanks for this” or “sorry for being super vague but I think you’re pretty cool” -- as his attention is immediately consumed by the sleeping creature in his arms. He grasps the bars of the cage and, with what seems like no effort at all, breaks the lock clean off. Carefully, like he’s trying to catch a snowflake on just the tip of his finger without having it melt, Garth reaches into the cage and gently gathers Poseidon in his hands, maneuvering the creature without having him bump his head on his way out of the cage. The discarded prison falls to the cave floor far below.

Tim and Jason watch in silence as Garth cradles the creature close to him, curled up against his chest, and Poseidon is possibly the ugliest thing Jason has ever seen but even he can find the scene cute. The creature’s tails trail out of Garth’s reach.

“Will he be okay?” Jason hears himself asking.

Garth smiles at him now, finally. “Yes, I think so. I found a shortcut earlier to a cave on the other side of the city, further down than this one, with an exit to open water. There’s plenty of food. If I leave him there, he can eat and then find his way back home himself.”

Tim drifts forward without a word. Garth doesn’t stop him from reaching out and slowly running his fingers over Poseidon’s back.

“Tim, Jason,” Garth begins again, gaining both of their attention from where they had been observing Poseidon outside of his cage. “Thank you, truly, from the bottom of my heart. And Poseidon thanks you, too. Without you…”

“We know,” Tim says with a smile. “But you’re welcome anyway.”

“I wish I could have helped more.”

“It’s okay. We get it. You’ve worked so hard to sit by the Queen’s side, I don’t want you to do anything that would ruin that.”

“Would you have done it anyway?” Jason asks all of a sudden. The two turn to look at him. “If Tim and I hadn’t rescued him. Would you have done it yourself?”

“Yes,” Garth says without hesitation.

“Then you’re welcome.”

Garth finds that answer funny for some reason. “You have an attitude, anyone ever tell you that?”

“All the time,” Jason says with a shark’s grin, thinking of Bruce. And Alfred. And all of his teachers...

“It’s a good attitude. Keep it.”

Jason doesn’t really know what to say to that, but fortunately, he doesn’t have to say anything. Garth is already swimming away, wishing them the best of luck for sneaking back unnoticed (especially to Jason, which is needed because he hasn’t actually thought about the going back part). When the Atlantean disappears into one of the many branching caverns, Tim and Jason start to make their way out and return to the city.

There are no words needed, no banter exchanged. Jason is familiar with this feeling by now, the cotton-fluff euphoria of saving someone’s life or helping someone’s day. The knowledge that he was an integral, significant part in their life, and that he’ll be remembered from then on -- that he’s made his mark and it’s a good one, it’s a mark that means happiness and hope. The feeling that he did something he didn’t royally fuck up. But when he looks at Tim, he knows instinctively that this must be a first for him -- the way his face glows gives it all away. He’s spinning in circles as he swims, and there’s no rush to get back, just the contentment to stay as is and bask in the moment.

In the end, it’s good that they basked in the moment while they could, because reality comes crashing down the moment they enter the city.

“Stop!” shouts a man, and out from behind the rocks emerge multiple Atlanteans in strange fin-shaped helmets, pointed javelins, shields, and uniforms.

Tim’s hands go up so fast that Jason gets whiplash just watching them. His own hands aren’t far behind.

“Shit.”

“So, how are you liking Atlantis so far?” Tim asks casually, and Jason stares at him from where he’s sitting against the opposite wall.

“Oh, it’s great. Fantastic. Perfect. Really love the style here -- the chains are a nice touch, although they’re a little suggestive for my tastes,” he responds, because what else is he supposed to do except roll with it?

“So suggestive. I think they might even suggest that you’re really bad at being a criminal. What an outlandish thought!”

“Oh my god,” Jason whispers with passion, feeling something slot into place.

Tim looks alarmed. “What?”

“You’re almost as sarcastic as me.”

There’s a moment’s pause before Tim raises an eyebrow. “Please. I can out sass you any day.”

“Weren’t you like this… cute little kid a few days ago? All bubbly and nice and wanting to save the world? What happened?”

“So you’re saying I can’t be sarcastic and save the world at the same time?”

Jason wants to say no, just to mess with Tim, but that would make him a hypocrite.

“Not if you keep getting arrested.”

Tim shoots him a look.

“Hey, this is my first offense!” Jason protests in response to the look.

“Not saying much when it’s your first offense in a city you’ve only been inside for two days.”

“You’re talking like you’re not the one who swam up to me all innocently and asked if I wanted to go on an adventure. I didn’t know it would be an adventure to prison.”

“I hold no responsibility after telling you what I was going to do!”

“Yeah, well,” Jason says with a huff, “you’re still a solicitor.”

“A what?”

“A jerk. It means you’re a jerk.”

Tim stares in obvious suspicion, but when he doesn’t rise to the bait Jason slumps against the wall and tries to keep boredom from creeping into his mind.

They aren’t actually in a prison, per say, more like a holding cell. There are only three he can see, including the one that they’re in. He briefly wonders how criminal procedure works here and if this means that they have to wait for a prosecutor or something.

The cell isn’t filthy only for the reason that it’s filled with water, but there’s dead kelp that must have floated in with the current at some point caught around the bars. There’s algae crawling in the corners, the long tendrils drifting about in a disturbing imitation of hair.

“I’m sorry,” Tim says all of a sudden, and Jason instantly feels bad.

“Don’t be,” he says, but when the merboy continues to look down, he adds: “Seriously. Anyone who knows me will tell you that I would have done something stupid eventually anyway.”

“Would you say that says something about you?” Tim quips after a moment, a dimmed version of the twinkle in his eye that’s rapidly becoming familiar.

“ Annnd we’re back to being a jerk.”

Tim doesn’t have time to come up with a response because it’s at that moment the outside door opens and four guards walk in. “A bit overkill, don’t you think?” Jason mutters as they come to a stop in front of the barred doors. The metal slides open with a clang. He holds his arms out to be unchained, but much to his dismay, the guard instead goes to unhook the chain from the wall and grabs the end with one hand, leading him forward (surprisingly gently, at least) with the other. Like a dog.

Jason scowls. It’s embarrassing. He isn’t going to stab anyone, for pete’s sake (and if he was, he would still be able to like this, so what even is the point?). He opens his mouth to quip something witty, but the silence in the air is unnerving and not even Tim is saying anything so he, for once, nervously decides to keep his mouth shut. He wants to ask where they’re going, but it seems like everyone knows but him, and in cases like those he likes to pretend he’s in on the answer too.

They arrive at familiar golden plated doors adorned with gems and shells. With dread, Jason watches the guards standing at either side open the doors to reveal a large room with a throne at the end.

Aquaman is seated on the throne, trident in hand like the royalty he is. Queen Mera is standing beside him, back tall and regal.

Jason gulps. He really, really wishes he weren’t in chains. Glancing back at Tim, it seems to him that the merboy is experiencing the same train of thought. They arrive in the center of the room, drifting down so they’re hovering in an imitation of standing on land (or, more accurately, on the moon). When the guards press down on his shoulder so that he’s kneeling and Tim is seated with his tail tucked behind him, Jason peers up nervously to see King Arthur looking down with a half-smile.

It gives Jason pause.

“Take off the chains,” he says, and the guards hesitate in obeying for just a split second. Jason wouldn’t have noticed if he weren’t right next to them. He rubs his wrists happily when the heavy metal finally falls away, but isn’t near distracted enough to take his eyes off of the King. “You may leave.”

He can’t be sure if this is protocol or not, but he’s the only one who seems phased. He tries to read the expression on either of the monarch’s faces, but both look impassive.

“Jason Todd, right?” the King asks, and Jason fights to keep his heart from beating out of control.

“Uh, yeah,” he says awkwardly.

“And Tim -- nice to see you making friends.”

“Sure is,” Tim responds.

Jason feels like he’s missing something.

“You two may stand,” the King says, not waiting until the two boys have fully risen to begin addressing Jason again. “So, Jason, my people tell me that you and Tim were caught stealing from the science laboratory. Is this true?”

“We like the word ‘rescue’ more,” Jason replies, and wishes, for once, that he could just shut up.

But the King only looks amused. “And why is that?”

He looks to Tim for help, who only nods. “The creature that was in the main room in the lab. I forgot what the scientists called him, but we’ve been calling him Poseidon. He...he was in pain. He had been there for a while, and the experiments performed on him were cruel, so we freed him.”

“And how do you know that the way he was being experimented on was cruel?”

“Tim told me.”

Tim doesn’t wait to be prompted before speaking, which, in hindsight, is probably extremely rude of him. Maybe. Jason isn’t sure how this whole royalty thing works. “Anyone can see it, and you know there’s more than one person in this city who can communicate with animals. You can communicate with animals. It was easy to know that he was in pain.”

“I’m more interested in how you knew,” King Arthur asks, as the Queen stiffens. Yeah. Definitely rude. But for some reason, the King hasn’t taken offense. Jason wonders if they’re familiar with each other. “Would I be right to assume that someone told you?”

“You would.”

Jason is expecting the King to ask more along that train of that, but he doesn’t. Instead, he turns back to Jason. “I know Tim by now,” the man says, confirming Jason’s suspicions. “But I don’t know you. This isn’t the first time Tim has done something without permission for something he felt was just, and it certainly won’t be the last. What I want to know is why you went through the trouble with him.” His eyes are stern, and he continues right as Jason opens his mouth to respond. “Did you do it because you thought you could get away with it, because you wanted to stir up trouble in my city? A city that you’re a guest in, no less? I need you to understand, Jason, that what you did here was reckless, more so than Tim’s actions. Tim is my own citizen and his punishment is up to me and me only, but your punishment will be up to me as well as the authorities of your own nation. You aided and abetted in the theft of something that has been labelled a top research priority in my part of the ocean. If I were a more malevolent leader, I would take the reckless actions of a stranger such as yourself, meant to be on their best hospitality from a former enemy state, as an act of hostility. Count yourself lucky that I’m not.”

Jason swallows, allowing the King’s words to settle between his ears. He didn’t think that freeing Poseidon would make him look like a...spy. But he shouldn’t be surprised.

He’s going to get such an earful from Bruce about this.

The worst part is that he has nothing else to say other than: “It was the right thing to do.”

“It was my idea,” Tim chimes in to his defense. Jason feels a rush of warmth at the attempt. “He had no clue about any of it and I wanted someone to help me, I swear. I didn’t even tell him what we were doing at first.”

Silence fills the room as the King considers everything that’s been said. After a few minutes, just long enough for Jason to start fidgeting horribly, he looks to the Queen and then back at them. “The Queen and I have already heard from Garth. He supports your story, although I wish he had come to me with this information sooner. But there’s nothing for it now. Tim, I would tell you not to do this again but I know it won’t work. However, as your King, I expect to be informed of things that you consider cruel and unusual happening in my kingdom. It’s always my concern, and to be not told information because you think that I either won’t listen or won’t consider it serious is a personal insult.” He pauses for the effect, and Tim looks down contritely. “As for you, Jason, I don’t believe you meant harm by your actions. Since you’re already leaving tomorrow and I really do hate political drama, you’ll be free to return to your group.”

Jason sees Tim slump in relief from the corner of his eye. He’s about to follow in his footsteps (maybe Bruce won’t hear about this… yeah, right. All it would take is Aquaman to gossip about some human boy royally fucking up and Bruce would immediately know who he’s talking about), when the King adds: “Unfortunately, theft still requires punishment, so you’ll be spending the night in your cell. The guards will release you in the morning.”

Tim looks at Jason very sheepishly as the guards return to lead them away, and he can only find it in himself to be a little annoyed.

It’s only when Jason gets to the doors that the King says from behind him: “Oh, and Jason? Say hi to Batman for me.”

“What kind of name is Batman ?” he hears Tim mutter as he gets dragged out in his shock.

“I’m going to drown.”

Tim looks at him, sleepy eyed and blank faced, from where he’s laying in the corner of the cell a foot away. He examines him obviously. “Well, you’re not drowning yet,” he says, and plops his head back down into his arms.

Jason pouts at the back of Tim’s head, reaching over to nudge him with a toe. “I’m being serious,” he whines.

“So am I. They gave us blankets and pillows, Jason. Pillows. They wouldn’t do that if they wanted you to drown.”

“Maybe they don’t know I’m not Atlantean. Maybe they forgot.”

“You swim worse than a baby.”

“Well, sorry that this reminds me of a Russian dungeon and those don’t have the most stellar reputation for valuing human life.”

“This isn’t a dungeon.”

There’s green slime coating the walls, thick enough in some places at the very top that Jason feels like he could lose his finger in it. The metal chains coiled on the ground on the other end of the cell have long since been half corroded and abandoned. The chains that used to be wrapped around him and Tim have been removed and left to hang there, and they’re in much better shape than the ancient-looking ones a few feet away. The algae growing from the cracks in the cobblestone pattern of the walls is disgustingly soft and creepy, and the only light entering the cell is from a dim unseen light source down the hall.

If this isn’t a dungeon, Jason is scared to find out what is. “Of course it isn’t,” he quips with false cheer.

Surprisingly enough, a few minutes later, Jason isn’t the one complaining. “This ground is so uncomfortable,” Tim says, frowning down at where the ground meets his tail. He wonders how different the scales feel against the coarse stone from skin. How many nerves do they have? He didn’t think they had any at all.

It’s an understatement. The ground is scraping against Jason’s skin and he’s probably going to have rashes for weeks. “At least we’re not on the surface. Gravity isn’t nice against uncomfortable surfaces.”

And just like that, Tim perks up with a look of fascination. “How does it feel?”

“What, gravity?”

A rapid head nod. Jason flounders. “Uh. Well. You don’t actually feel it. You get used to it. But it’s hard to jump and stuff. After being in the water for long enough, it’s like...you gained a lot of weight. Like something heavy is pulling you to the ground. It’s why people trip so much.”

“Trip?”

“When you miss a step, or your foot catches on something and you fall. Falling, by the way, is a lot more painful and goes a lot faster when gravity’s there to be a bitch about it.”

Tim smiles at the description, even though Jason’s being totally serious. He wonders if telling him that a lot of people die from falling (he thinks immediately of Dick’s parents) would be too much. He wonders if Tim even knows. “I want to feel it one day.”

“Technically, you already do. Gravity is what holds the ocean down,” Jason points out.

“Is there gravity here?”

“Things still fall to the ground, don’t they?”

Tim nods like Jason gave him a very important piece of life advice. “We don’t call that gravity. We just say that the water is pushing everything down.”

It’s a logical train of thought, Jason reasons. They stop talking shortly after that, the conversation trailing off into the water around them. Tim is determined to find a way to lay so that his tail isn’t touching the ground, but that would require using the pillows that he’s resting his head on or the one blanket he’s wearing. He’s about to lay the blanket out when Jason solves the dilemma for him by allowing Tim to rest his head on his stomach.

Tim asks more questions about walking, and he gets a kick out of it when Jason tries to explain how it’s possible to trip on absolutely nothing. The only thing the merboy can compare it to is momentarily forgetting how to swim, which Jason thinks is a totally unfair comparison. Gravity is a cruel mistress.

He asks questions about the sun and the clouds, and finds it weird that sometimes it’s too bright to look at either. He asks about the moon, the stars, and eventually  Jason thinks to ask why Tim has never gone to the surface.

Jason is then granted all the horror stories Tim has in his arsenal about traversing the open water. He thought at first that Tim would tell him stories about how terrible humans are, and turns out he does have a few, but warnings to stay away from humans are nothing compared to the warnings given to stay away from the ocean itself.

The only thing Jason can compare it to is getting lost in a desert, but even then he knows that it’s possible to see at least where he’s already been, and he’s never had the personal experience. With the ocean’s constantly moving currents, it’s impossible to know where you’ve already swam and what direction you’ve been travelling if you stop to drift for even a few minutes, and all of it becomes possible by swimming in any direction from here for just an hour or two by Tim’s speed.

It sounds terrifying.

Jason doesn’t know when they eventually fall asleep, but it must have been sometime between explaining how snowflakes are made and telling the story of that time he licked a traffic pole. He wakes up with a tail wrapped around one of his legs.

Tim swims off as a guard escorts Jason personally all the way to the courtyard of Poseidonis, where all too familiar faces are sitting around waiting for something to start. He figures it’s a dance performance judging by the matching costumes of the Atlanteans walking by.

It takes a moment for someone to spot him, but once they do, it’s in no time at all that everyone’s heads are turning to watch his approach. All of the adults look pissed, and Jason makes a mental note not to go anywhere near Navy-Guy and his henchmen for the rest of the trip. Miss Holloway looks more of a mix between exasperated and nervous than angry, which is a blessing. He doesn’t want to get on his favourite teacher’s bad side.

They’re all silent as the guard drops him off, pulls the adults aside to have a few words, and then swims away.

Jason looks back at all the stares uncertainly. Luckily, the performance decides that it’s prime time to start, and he tries to ignore the stares in favour of watching twenty Atlanteans swim in formation.

“Dude,” Ives hisses next to his ear, and Jason raises his eyebrows at him. “Is it true?”

He hums like he has no idea what Ives is talking about. Normally he’d wonder how everyone found out so quickly, but he shouldn’t be surprised. They’re teenagers.

“Did you actually get arrested?”

"Yeah,” Jason says as flippantly as he possibly can. It does nothing to stop the barrage of questions, and he answers them as bluntly and honestly as he can. He has nothing to hide (well, not about this, anyway).

He pretends not to notice all the eavesdroppers. Better they know the truth than invent rumours, after all. Knowing this group, he’ll go back to school on Monday and find out that he apparently murdered the King or something.

But the nail in the coffin doesn’t come until the end of the day. The group has been allowed to split up in order to look at booths. No one has the money to buy anything, but the wares on sale are interesting enough just to look at, and he knows for a fact that one of the girls in the class got a beautifully adorned bracelet for free from an Atlantean who was flirting with her. They also found as the day progressed that many Atlanteans are willing to trade, and random members of Jason’s class keep disappearing to go find jewelry or other items from their bags (there’s not much, because not many supplies were necessary for the trip, which causes a lot of disappointment throughout the group). But as the sun starts to go down and he and Ives are preoccupied with discussing how to tell the difference between a real and fake emerald underwater as instructed earlier by a vendor, Ives turns to say something to Jason -- and gapes over his shoulder instead.

Jason turns around at the feeling of his shoulder being tapped, only to look into the deep blue eyes that could only belong to Tim, who’s holding what looks like a shell clasped within his fist.

They’re almost back on the submarine now. It’s just a few feet ahead, and the only reason he and Ives are still in the water is because they are, like usual, stuck in the back of the group. Before Jason can make his way closer to the water draining chamber at the bottom of the sub -- bless Justice League technology -- Tim gently tugs at his wrist to get him to stop.

“I almost didn’t find this in time,” the merboy says, and opens his hand to reveal a moderately sized conch shell. There’s a deep, bruised red color that arches across the surface like geometric imitation of waves, and the background is a soft rosy color. Light from the submarine dances across the reflective film of the inside like a rainbow star. “I found this when I explored further than Poseidonis once. It was stupid of me, but I’ve kept this since. There are shells like it, maybe even more beautiful that you can buy, but this hasn’t been touched by the addition of gems or paint, and to me… That makes it better.” He gives it shyly to Jason, who takes it gently into his hands.

“Did you know that you can hear the ocean in these?” he blurts out.

Tim tilts his head. “That’s impossible,” he says, bluntly practical. Jason finds it funny that the boy living in a city of magic, whose entire race is a product of magic, can still confidently say something like that.

“There are theories for why it happens,” Jason says. “But when you put these up to your ear on land, it’s like you can hear the wind and the waves of the sea no matter how far away you are.”

When Tim smiles then, it’s accompanied by smoothly placing his palm over the hand Jason is using to hold the conch. “Then you’ll never forget about me.”

I don’t think I ever could, he doesn’t say.

He’s almost to the submarine when he suddenly has second thoughts. None of his classmates are ever going to get the opportunity to visit Atlantis again, but he might. He’s Robin, after all. Yet, he doesn’t know when that will be, and he has a sudden unshakeable fear that it won’t be for a long time. When he turns around, Tim is still floating there, watching him. He tilts his head quizzically when Jason starts swimming full speed towards him.

There’s the sound of impact when he barrels right into Tim, sending the merboy on his back with Jason on top of him holding on like a monkey. He feels something in his chest squeeze when Tim hugs him back.

When he lets go, he does it abruptly and awkwardly, and it’s only then that he becomes hyper-aware of the fact that they’re in view of the submarine window. He smiles, embarrassed, and wonders if his face is pink. He opens his mouth.

“Jason!” Ives calls.

“You should go,” Tim says, although he looks like he would rather be saying anything else.

“Yeah…,” he says. It feels wrong to leave things there. He should at least say something about meeting again. But as far as Tim is aware, Jason is just a normal human kid, and normal human kids don’t regularly visit the formerly lost city of Atlantis.

“Bye,” says Tim with a wave.

“Bye,” Jason says quieter, then swims back towards Ives, cursing himself the whole way.

If his face wasn’t pink before, it certainly is once he gets to the front of the submarine (stumbling, wincing in pain) and he’s faced with over a dozen pairs of wide eyes. And yet, the first thing he does is look to the window, searching for a familiar red tail and blue eyes, even as his ears start getting assaulted with the multitude of questions being asked all at once. He smiles when he finds what he’s looking for and waves until the small figure disappears into the distance.

“Let me get this straight,” Bruce says, in full Batman regalia save for the cowl hanging from his neck, and Jason shuffles awkwardly. “You met the only merboy in all of Poseidonis, and within minutes of knowing him agreed to break into Atlantis’ highest acclaimed science laboratory to steal an experiment of top research priority, because it felt like the right thing to do? Even though you didn’t actually know what you were doing at first?”

“Was he cute?” Barbara pipes in with zero grace.

Jason can see the exasperated groan Bruce wants to give, even if he never will. He’s not sure if it makes him more nervous or relieved. He ducks his head and scratches his neck and does everything to avoid Bruce and Barbara’s eyes.

“What?” Barbara says in response to Bruce’s look. “It’s an important question. Boys are stupid around pretty people. You’ve met Dick, right?”

“Dick thinks with his dick,” Jason says, feeling the need to make fun of someone to take the edge off. “He was even named after it.”

“So is that a yes or a no?”

“That’s a no,” Jason responds immediately, and tries not to feel like disappearing into the cave floor.

“Jason,” Bruce says, stern and serious. “Do you have any idea how badly this could have turned out for everyone had I not warned Arthur that you were visiting beforehand?”

“What? Why did you do that?” Jason protests.

Bruce raises an eyebrow. “Why do you think?”

“You couldn’t have known I was going to get arrested.”

Bruce gratefully accepts the tea Alfred hands him and says nothing in response. Batman? More like Batjerk.

“I know how to follow the rules!”

“I know you do,” Bruce says. “It’s the fact that you know the rules and decide not to follow them that’s the problem.”

Jason can see Barbara obviously eavesdropping from her perch beside the Batcomputer and having a hell of a time with it and it’s not a fun experience. Especially since she’s on her phone, and he would bet a million dollars he doesn’t have that she’s texting Dick.

It kind of makes him feel like a failure. Would the original Robin have pulled something this stupid?

No. Dick was -- is -- perfect. He wouldn’t have monumentally screwed up like this.

“You should have told Aquaman.”

Jason opens his mouth to retort, but ends up only holding his breath and slowly releasing it because, yeah. They probably should have told Aquaman.

“I could probably ask why you didn’t, but I wouldn’t understand your reasoning anyway,” says Bruce, and Jason bristles because that sounds like he’s calling him stupid. Yet, much to his surprise, the man continues as Barbara is beckoned upstairs by Alfred. When the butler clears the room of people, it’s a sure sign that Bruce is about to attempt actually talking, as opposed to lecturing or arguing. The two men are so in sync it’s kind of scary. Or maybe it’s just Alfred who’s in sync with Bruce. “Around the first year Dick went out as Robin, he did something very similar.”

Jason has to take a moment for that admission to sink in. “Seriously?”

Bruce nods and takes a long sip from his tea. “It wasn’t on your scale, mind you. There was a long series of Mad Hatter kidnappings, back when we were unaware of the mad man’s operations. One of Dick’s classmates had gotten kidnapped, and he was one of the last people to see her. He got a lead, had Alfred chauffeuring him all over the place without my knowledge. He told him that he didn’t want to bother me with potentially false leads. Luckily, I just so happened to be in the vicinity when he went to confront the Hatter and save all the girls being mind controlled. He charged in there foolishly and without back up because he felt it was the right thing to do. While yes, it was, he could have certainly gone about it a better, safer, and easier way. And it’s not like that was the last of the things he pulled on his own, either.”

While Jason would love to laugh at how stupid Dick was when he was little, that actually sounds totally badass. Figures. But he’s still skeptical as to where Bruce is going with all this, so he doesn’t make a comment.

“I suppose it’s a rite of passage as Robin, then, to pull something risky for the good of others and get away with it. You’re lucky Garth was able to confirm your story and that some of the scientists are currently on trial for animal cruelty, but this will not happen again. Understood?”

Jason can only nod dumbly. He turns away in a daze at Bruce’s nod of dismissal, passing Alfred on his way up the stairs. He pauses at the top just long enough to hear Alfred’s footsteps stop and Bruce say, “How likely is it that Jason will listen to me and not pull something like this the next time he’s out of my sight?”

“Not very likely, sir,” Alfred responds, deadpan.

“Didn’t think so.”

Jason wouldn’t be able to erase the stupid grin etched onto his face as he skips into the Manor’s study even if he tried.