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Part 8 of Demo’s Mer Obsessions
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Published:
2024-08-08
Updated:
2024-09-21
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4,083
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3/?
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The little oopsie that Jason Insists wasn't his fault!

Summary:

At a time when the rights of sirens are in question, Tim Drake sets out to prove the crimes of the Wayne Foundation Aquarium and Sanctuary once and for all, and free the two sirens held captive by the greedy monopolist Bruce Wayne.

Notes:

A gift fic for the wonderful Ciara, who you might know as one of the cohosts of the Mer WWT last month! She has offered to sell me her soul in exchange for writing this fic uwu I hope you enjoy!

The title of the fic will make sense in time ^^

Chapter 1

Chapter Text

Timothy Drake, or Tim as he prefers to be called, puts on his super special secret agent jacket, all black to let him hide in the darkness, enacting justice from the shadows. He tucks his super special secret agent camera into its case slung around his neck, complete with lenses, graphics cards and backups. To look cool (and less cute) he slaps on a pair of sunglasses. This is it. He is so ready, now.

His mission? Infiltrate the Wayne Foundation Aquarium and Sanctuary and expose the TRUTH with a capital T.

Let’s walk back a few steps.

Every century (or every few decades, if you ask some people), there is a great social change brought on by recognitions of injustice perpetrated by evil men. While thieves, warmongers and murderers have always been looked down upon as the evils of society, slavers, racists and witch hunters acted within twisted rules, carrying out evil deeds with the approval of the masses.

Every century (or every few decades), there is a great social change against these norms. Slavery was outlawed. Women gained the right to vote. Only a twenty years ago (which isn’t very long ago, according to his teachers, even though to Tim it feels like a past era), Justice League International’s humanitarian efforts across the globe have ushered a new wave of change, a movement to recognise metahumans and any other non-traditional human being as fully deserving of rights and protections.

Perhaps social change is accelerating just as much as technological change, because now there is a new fight, the fight for siren rights.

That is what leads Tim to WFAS, the so-called sanctuary for recovering sirens. Yeah right. Tim knows a lie when he hears one, and he’s going there to expose them for all their wrongdoing.

With all his super secret spy gear in order, Tim sets off on his task. He hails a taxi (because no way is he walking all the way to the coast) and asks the driver to drop him off about thirty metres from the centre. There, he begins his approach, passing through rubbish left behind by protesters, and graffiti both in support and opposing the centre. If he had more time, he'd plan his attack on the same day as a protest, but time is of the essence, and if things go well, he won't even need any help.

He’s scoped out this place many times, planning out escape routes and ways to avoid being incriminated for his actions. He loops away from the main entrance and to the side of the building, where the emergency exits are located. One of the employee exits is there, mostly used for smoke breaks and bringing in shipments. According to the schedule he’d ‘obtained,’ nobody should be in the vicinity while he enters (not break in!).

Tim walks away from the bustling crowds waiting to get in, waiting to ogle the poor abused sirens being held captive by the greedy monopolist Bruce Wayne. He can barely suppress his rage. Wayne pretends to be all humble and silly, but he knows something is up with him! That man’s innocent, dumb act is hiding evil.

The door is nowhere near as glamorous as the main entrance. It’s clean, but plain, which already puts it leagues above any door in Gotham. Tim’s face grimaces with disgust. Of course Mr Wayne would be so rich that even the doors of his workplace are neat.

He’s getting off track, though. His gloved hands (nylon, because stray pieces of wool can be used as evidence!) grab a lockpick, and set to work. Thank you Lockpicking Lawyer for all your help. Tim promises to never out the man in case he is ever imprisoned by Mr Wayne’s scary non-lockpicking lawyers for breaking in. He even used a VPN to make sure nobody knows it was him watching those videos!

After a few minutes, the lock finally clicks open, and Tim quietly cheers. He leans into the gap and peeks into the empty room, with only a little table and sign in sheet leading into a hallway further up.

Now, all he has to do is make his way to the siren exhibit before being seen. Tim pokes his head into the hallway, still clear, and cackles. Oh yes. Everything’s coming together.

From there, his plan is simple. Hang out at the aquarium, enjoy the fish, bemoan the cruel violation of human rights, then sneak up the rafters while nobody’s looking. Foolproof!

And to help that end, he reaches into his backpack and takes out a visitor armband which was acquired through more creative means than simply paying. Is he stealing from the aquarium by gaining access without paying? Absolutely. Would he rather puke than give Bruce Wayne any more money? Absolutely!

The armband comes in handy when a huge muscular employee catches him exiting out the employee area. Tim does an admirable job of looking innocent. “I’m super-duper sorry sir! I was just looking for the bathroom!”

The large man gives him an easy smile, and practically leads him to the main area. Of course, being a nosy adult, he has to ask Tim where his parents are, to which Tim answers with an easy “Oh they’re in the café. See ya!”

Works every time. He even managed to scope out the place before he was escorted out, so all he has to do is wait until closing time.

Tim gives the seals, the penguins and the sharks a visit, and goes ooo at the crown of thorns starfish they have in a smaller tank, surrounded by coral. He’s a bit sad there aren’t any Triton snails around to slurp the pesky starfish up, but it makes sense the aquarium wouldn’t want their precious assets to each other.

Speaking of which, the siren victims.

At 12 pm sharp, the crowd gathers at the amphitheatre, surrounding a huge tank that connects with the rest of the aquarium. Half the building is dedicated to a massive series of tunnels and tanks, filled with all kinds of animals and simulated ecosystems. Last year it was hailed as an ingenious feat of engineering. What’s particularly impressive is how the employee areas and the aquariums had this heat exchange system, helping to solve the inherent energy efficiency of most aquariums.

Where was he? Right, the sirens.

While all that innovation and big thinking is cool and all, it doesn’t change the fact that it’s all just an elaborate prison. Sure it’s a big prison, but nothing could substitute true freedom.

The lights go dark. The crowd murmurs, and Bruce freaking Wayne appears at the top of the tank, all theatrical like a circus ringmaster.

“Ladies and gentlemen, it’s my honour to introduce to you our most famous resident! The one, the only, the flying Dick!”

Disgusting. How can that man sleep at night, having named a child (because Richard was taken in by the aquarium when he was very young) such a vulgar name?

At the bottom of a tank, a tunnel opens up, and out comes Richard in all his glory. With blue scales instead of a human’s skin tone, wide gossamer wings, and charming, barely-human smile, it’s no wonder why he’s a fan favourite among the siren visitors.

But Tim’s trance is broken as Mr Wayne holds out hoops for Richard to jump through. Then he holds three up, then he tosses them into the air. Then he grabs a ball like the living, breathing person in front of him is nothing more than a seal. Man and siren go through increasingly complicated and elaborate tricks, but all Tim can see is abuse. All he can see is Mr Wayne’s gleeful, plain-to-see evilness out on full display. It sickens him.

He can’t stomach it anymore. It has to stop.

Tim hops out of his seat in the back row, and marches around the corner, to a more secluded spot now that everyone’s in the amphitheatre. His target is clear, a little white button with a hammer on top. Before he does the deed, Tim adjusts his sunglasses, making sure his identity is hidden. He takes a deep breath, thinks about what he’s fighting for, and smashes the button in.

The fire alarm blares like an electric shock to the body. Tim jumps. His cheeks heat up with bubbling shame and panic. Among all his plans today, this is undoubtedly the one he had the most hang-ups about, but he has to do it. For the sirens.

As chaos descends upon the aquarium, Tim utilises his short stature to slip beneath the notice of the rushing crowds. Within minutes, he’s found his way to the rafters. To complete the disguise, he turns his jacket inside out, turning it from black to red. Now, all he has to do is wait. Tim sits himself down with his phone, camera, some snacks, and settles in for the long haul.

Chapter 2: Chapter 2

Summary:

Timothy finds the horrifying evidence he's been looking for. Bruce Wayne will be behind bars within the year!
right?

Notes:

This fic will be a bit slow, since i'm also trying to finish a bunch of my other fics too, and work on my other two long-running series!

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

That night, as the aquarium closes, and Tim is about scream from boredom, which is a stupid idea because that will get him caught, and then Bruce Wayne will either throw him into prison or hire the mafia to make him sleep with the fishies forever.

He shudders. Wouldn’t that be awful? Dedicating his life to fighting for siren rights, only to be sent to the bottom of Gotham Harbour in cement shoes.

Once it turned out that it was a false alarm, the guests quickly returned, and the employees did a whole bunch of running around, trying to find who did it. Thankfully, Tim’s power of stealth allows him to remain unseen. That, and the fact that these rafters are technically off-limits on account of them being kind of old.

So much for Wayne money, huh?

Once the dust settled, Tim’s chances of being caught went down significantly, allowing him time to occupy himself with other activities. Gathering evidence, taking photos, reading sci-fi mystery, the works. At one point he falls asleep from sheer boredom.

Despite his research telling him this is the main tank for the siren captives, none of the two residents appear over the course of the day. Richard’s absence is likely due to him being paraded around the adoring masses like a show horse, while Tim isn’t sure why Jason isn’t around. The poor kid might just be sleeping, recovering from the trauma of having to deal with Bruce Wayne on the regular.

Again, the man sickens him.

As the lights darken and the visitors slowly file out of the closing aquarium, a high-pitched whistle shakes Tim from his impromptu nap.

The opportunity to expose Bruce Wayne’s crimes to the world evaporates the lingering grogginess behind his eyes, and Tim scrambles to ready his camera. The boy crawls carefully on the wobbly rafters, suspended only by cables attached to the ceiling, and leans over the edge precariously.

Below, on the ground floor, two shapes emerge from the water, Richard’s brilliant blues, and Jason’s faded red scales. The younger siren kid looks bad. Tim zooms the view on Jason’s broken fins held together by splints and bandages, and the patches of skin exposed thanks to lost scales. Even without his scales, Jason’s skin is a bright red. Interesting…

WFAS may have helped Jason to heal, but that could easily be a ruse. There are many, many more ways to mistreat a child than to directly injure them, and keeping Jason physically health would both improve their PR and earn them more cash, once he’s well enough to force through the same training as Richard. It’s awful.

He needs to free them, and fast. Tim sets about taking pictures of the damage. Then, Bruce Wayne enters the room, and the sirens erupt into chitters and chirps. He wishes, oh he wishes he could understand siren speak, but for now he switches on his tape recorder, so a translator can analyse it later.

“Good show, Dick.” Again, with that debased name. “You were brilliant out there.”

Dick preens, used to receiving praise from his jailer. The Stockholme Syndrome runs deep.

Jason chirps something indignant sounding, and Bruce leans down to ruffle the captive’s hair. How horrifying! Get your hands off that innocent child you creep!

One of the most important survival mechanisms for a wild animal is fear or wariness of humans. That’s why sometimes people are advised against feeding them, because it will make them less wary of human interaction, which is ultimately very bad for those animals in the long run. Tim’s heard PSAs and videos repeating over and over to not approach a siren in the wild, because they will very likely bite you if you encroach on their personal space.

Jason’s only been at this place for a few months. How could Bruce Wayne have broken his will to fight already?!

Tim’s camera click click clicks away.

The captives exchange a few more chirps, before Richard submerges and swims away, leaving the younger alone. Tim swallows a lump in his throat. This will be hard to watch.

Bruce Wayne takes Jason’s arm, and wades into the water. Tim watches in abject horror as the man proceeds to torture the innocent child. Jason’s wails of pain and agony pierce through the air, turning the room into an auditorium of suffering, with Tim as the unwitting audience. The evil Bruce Wayne keeps whispering something that Tim can’t hear. Mockery? Encouragement? Dangling freedom in front of the child who he never intends to free? All the while he leads Jason around, forcing the kid through painful, unnatural motions.

At one point, Jason flops onto the water, exhausted and drained. He’s clearly been worked to death, as seen by the pained grimace on his face, but Bruce Wayne the Chlid-Hating Sadist has lost all mercy in his heart, and goes to poke Jason demeaningly in the side. “Come on, Jason, don’t be dramatic. Just a bit more and we’ll be done.”

Tim wants to throw up.

He scrambles back from the edge, checking his camera. Dozens of high-quality pictures detailing Bruce Wayne’s crimes in full. This is it. This is the smoking gun. The man will be ruined by Sunday.

The boy on the rafters takes a moment to calm down. He grips the railing, and takes deep breaths. True journalists have to endure terrible imagery all the time for the greater good. It’s hard to concentrate when Jason’s wailing is all he can hear.

After what feels like hours, the crying stops. He looks down to see Jason crying at the edge of the tank, little pearl tears pooling on the concrete.

The picture he takes feels wrong, like those YouTube videos going over the evils of certain family vlogging channels, how they profit from their children’s distress. These sirens are still people. They deserve privacy too. Privacy is something Jason and Richard have never had since being imprisoned within these glass walls. Tim could never imagine how that feels.

But this photo could change everything, or at least he hopes it can. They say a good picture is worth a thousand words, after all.

He’s taken away from his thoughts by Bruce Wayne’s voice. The man kneels next to a prone Jason, stroking his hair again, telling him he did good. Jason replies with a pained whimper, and Tim saves the photo with determination.

He has to see this through.

The two sirens rotate in and out of the tank from time to time, speaking with their jailer, getting fed, and being groomed. Everything remotely incriminating is diligently documented with microphone and camera, until at last Bruce Wayne leaves for the night, and the sirens leave the tank.

The long day is catching up to the young boy watching silently above. Tim has a lot of photos to sort through tomorrow, but he’s proud of himself. Mr Wayne’s empire of evil will soon come toppling down like a row of dominos. Just wait.

A long yawn accompanies a kitten-like stretch of the arms. He’s so tired that he yawns a second time soon after, shutting his eyes while he sleepily stumbles over the walkway.

It is because of that momentary lapse of attention that Tim’s foot snags on the loose seam between the segments of the walkway. The boy falls to the cold metal surface, but his misfortune does not end there. His weight dislodges the walkway segments apart, causing a growing gap. At the same time, the piece that Tim is own swings forward, causing it to incline ever so slightly.

For a boy wearing a smooth, frictionless jacket, this spells disaster. Tim’s eyes widen. His heart pounds. The boy frantically claws at the holed metal sheet, but his gloved hands cannot find purchase. The boy’s dangling legs drag the rest of his body down, down with gravity.

Until he is freefalling for the tank.

Here is an interesting tidbit about Timothy Drake’s life. As a rich kid living in Bristol, whose parents are always busy doing work, Tim has never learned how to swim. The last time he asked his dad, the man nodded and set about preparing time to take him to a swimming pool, but the plan fell through, and Tim never brought it up again.

He wishes he had.

Tim lands on his back, the surface tension turning the water as hard as concrete as the boy cries out, before going under. Cold water rushes into his clothes like an electric shock, stunning him into opening his mouth. A fatal mistake. The boy thrashes in the water, but it only serves to weaken him further. His vision goes black. His arms fall limp. Tim sinks like a stone, barely lasting a minute before his lungs are cleansed of precious oxygen.

In minutes, the life of a promising young child is cut short.

 

 

 

An hour later, clicking and chirping echo through the tunnels.

“I’m serious, Dickie. I definitely heard something fall in. And smelled it too!”

“I told you, Jason. It’s probably nothing. The only sirens in this aquarium are you and me. It’s probably just an octopus sneaking in or- HOLY SHIT.”

Notes:

Just like in the fic that inspired this one, Jason really is just being dramatic, and it's his physical therapy. Bruce is being as gentle and soothing as he can, but Jason can't keep the inner threatre kid down.

Chapter 3

Summary:

How the aquarium staff react to aftermath.

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

Tim Drake’s whereabouts remain unknown to all but two sirens for several hours. The housekeeper that his parents hired would not be present until Sunday at the earliest. In preparation for his heist, the boy had excused himself from class the next day, meaning that it would not be until 36 hours that his homeroom teacher makes an enquiry as to his status to his parents. It would take them a further four hours for them to read the email, and call the landline of an empty house. The residents of the neighbouring Wayne Manor are similarly ignorant, having rarely ever seen the boy out and about anyway.

No, the first person to suspect Tim Drake’s disappearance is Diana Prince, the security officer at the Wayne Foundation Aquarium, though she will not know it yet. Ever dutiful, she enters the building at five a.m. sharp, ready to begin her shift after a morning jog. Her security team will arrive in the hour or so, but the night shift ends early. She doesn’t want the poor guy to overwork himself. She finds Jared, the night guard, half-asleep in the security room, who eagerly changes hands with her. After logging in her entrance and his exit, she does a routine check of the building, making sure no funny business has transpired overnight.

Her sweep begins at the entrance, finding nothing. The soft ambience of the still water mixed with cold early morning air, and the quietness of the empty building filled her with great peace. What they’re doing at this aquarium is good work. She looks over the amphitheatre, unoccupied until show time later today. Her sweep continues inwards, weaving in between the backrooms and the public exhibits and tanks, until at last she reaches the boys’ private tank. Bruce placed it far out of public reach, to give them a place to relax outside of wandering eyes.

Diana pushes the door open into the tank room. Their actual tank was hidden even deeper into the aquarium. This tank is just the entrance, a place where they can surface and talk to the staff, and for the staff to spend time with them.

However, her eyes catch onto a shape in the water. She squints, but cannot make it out. Diana steps forward, heading up the stairs to the edge of the tank. One inch from the water, the scraps floating on the surface become clear. Blue denim, white cotton, and black and red nylon. Clothes, or what remains of them.

Immediately, she cups her hands around her mouth. “Boys?” she calls out in an imitation of siren speech. No response. They’re probably sleeping, or just can’t hear her. Panic rises. Diana dashes for the security office, and shuffles through the cameras. First thing she checks is the camera overlooking the private tank’s entrance. Empty, on both sides of the door, for hours at a time. Diana realises with a grimace that the footage is looped.

A memory flashes in her head. The false fire alarm yesterday, which nobody could find the cause of. She pulls up yesterday’s footage, thankfully unaltered, and spots a small child in a large hoodie. She narrows her eyes. Diana takes the time to follow the boy through the cameras, only for him to never reunite with any parents. She watches as the boy abruptly slips out of the ampitheatre. Moments later, the fire alarm goes off. As the crowds of people herd out the emergency exits. It is then that the kid exits one camera’s range, and does not appear in the next one’s. That was when the footage started looping.

A white shirt, blue jeans, and a black hoodie with a red lining. She’s found her suspect, but the dread in her stomach demands to know what happened to him.

Diana dashes into the private tank room again, and looks up.

The rafters hang just an inch out of alignment. Diana’s blood freezes cold.

 

Line break

 

The meeting room is silent. Bruce Wayne at the head, Diana beside him along with her other co-workers.

The child who had snuck into the aquarium did well to hide his face and movements. In honesty, they didn’t even know if the child was even a boy or not. They also had no name for them, seeing as they had stolen an armband to enter the building. No name, no face, not even a name tag or wallet in their shredded clothing. By the time the pieces were recovered, there was nothing Diana could do to identify their wearer.

“We need to search the tanks,” Lucius says, ever the practical man.

“My boys are not killers,” Bruce snaps.

Lucius holds his hands up placatingly. “I know, but the shreds were in their tank. Right at the same time someone tampered with the cameras.”

“If they’d found a body, they’d have called for help. If the boy fell in, they would’ve helped them out. Dick and Jason have been known to save drowning people.”

“We all know that, Bruce. We love those boys just as you do, but can’t you see this is a threat to their safety?”

Bruce glares at him, but Lucius does not back down, and they both know the older man has a point. Diana clears her throat. “It seems clear that the mystery child used the chaos of the fire alarm to slip away. The only question is if he truly fell in, or if this was some kind of scare tactic, and the scraps of clothing are just that. Scraps. With the CCTV footage busted, it is also possible that this is the work of a much more nefarious adult.”

“If someone was trying to hurt the reputation of our aquarium, wouldn’t they have left the scraps somewhere more publically visible?” Bruce points out.

“That’s the question, isn’t it?” Diana asks.

“There’s one last thing,” Bruce says. “After we talk to the boys, we’ll need to call the police.”

The silence returns, uncomfortable. Everybody knows it’s the only moral thing to do. If they even suspect a child might be in danger, they have to report it. However, to call the police and begin an investigation will cement the reality of the situation. They can only hope that this was all some kind of prank, and the kid will turn up somewhere, completely unharmed.

Notes:

So in addition to my ADHD, I was talking to a close friend of mine about some things, and they said "Have you considered you might have autism?"

And i just sat back and i was like O.O. because I had a breif phase when i was 12 where i was convinced I had Asperger's, before dismissing it, after which I didn't think much more about it. So it was a bit of a shock to return to the idea of having autism. Only, now that I have more life experience, and much more struggles, the dots started connecting in a very autism-esque picture...

Maybe I should go get a diagnosis, huh? Sadly that isn't in the cards for me for a while! But yeah, i'm so terribly sorry for no uplaods this week :( Mental heatlh has been... rough, but at least I now know why!

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