Chapter Text
“Got you.”
The young man whispered the words with his lips alone. His emerald eyes widened, and he rose sharply from his chair. It rolled aside with a soft scrape against the floor. Pressing the screens that floated before his eyes, he zoomed in on the image.
A triton.
A young triton.
Not that Damian understood the lifespans of these creatures, but this one looked young. Black, short hair – strange because, regardless of gender, they usually wore their hair long, tangled in the water and hanging over their heads like living hoods.
On his temples were translucent blue fins. On his cheeks, the same blue scales shimmered, tracing down his neck to his collarbones. On his shoulders, red scales glittered – a dangerous colour that ran down his spine and ended at the tail fin. On his chest, a vague pattern of blue and cyan scales. Damian would have said it looked like the letter S, but he wasn't sure. Why would a completely different species have a Latin S on its chest? Ridiculous.
Despite the massive red tail, its fins were blue – the same as on its face. Almost so translucent that they merged with the blueness of the ocean.
Neat gills sat at his ribs, and more at his neck.
Damian’s first experiment: do the gills react to touch? Through the screen, they looked so intimate. So fragile.
The eyes were closed, but Damian remembered that blue colour. He hadn't known eyes could be so deep – pure, cloudless-sky blue. He wondered: did tritons ever swim up from their murky depths? Did they show their faces to the sun? Or did they have no idea that anything existed beyond the water?
Wayne believed he had kept the monster alive. If not, it would be a disaster. But even a dead triton would satisfy young Wayne's curiosity.
Finally gathering himself, he found the armrest of his chair with his hands and pulled it closer to sit down again. He couldn't lose his composure. He’d been tracking this monster for days, planning. Everything had to be perfect.
He pressed several keys on the keyboard under the table, and a pair of capped controllers appeared. He gripped them tightly in his palms, lowering the right one slightly. From the ship, a mechanical arm extended – smooth, as if Damian weren’t kidnapping an ocean dweller, but trying to win a toy from a claw machine.
One wrong move, and the fish would fall and sink to the bottom. But unlike the arcade game, if he dropped this toy, he wouldn't get a second chance.
The triton was in the arm's grasp. The left controller moved back. Wayne watched everything remotely, controlling it all. The ship he had built was designed entirely for one purpose: to transport his treasure to him without problems, so he could begin the study.
When a green notification finally appeared on the screen, confirming success, Damian set down the controllers. Only then did he notice how hard he had been gripping them. He felt the pain. Saw the marks his own nails had left on his palms.
He leaned back in his chair. It creaked, low and long. He pressed a hand to his chest to steady his heartbeat. His breathing.
“Got you.”
The short phrase left his lips again, and this time a smile spread across his face. He bared his canines – inherited from his grandfather, passed down from his mother, and so on, all the way back to the first man in his maternal line, the one whose DNA had glitched.
Damian covered his predatory smile with his palm.
He needed to collect himself.
Yes, he’d caught the monster. But now he had to wait for the ship to bring it to the base, transfer the capsule to the lab, and endure his father's lecture about how kidnapping a member of another species was inhumane, and how there would be a million consequences.
He shook his head, pushing the dark thoughts away. The nervous tic ruined his hairstyle – a strand of fringe that had been carefully slicked back fell onto his forehead. The young heir to the names Wayne and Al Ghul had to run his fingers through his hair to fix it.
He stood up, studied himself in the full-length mirror. Did he need to change before leaving the estate for the base?
He looked impeccable. White shirt tucked into high-waisted trousers, emphasising a narrow waist and broad shoulders. Sleeves rolled to the elbows. His shoes caught every ray of light, but their special feature was the heel – slightly higher than the standard. Since childhood, he'd had a complex about his height. By twenty, he'd finally outgrown his father, but the habit of choosing elevated shoes remained. Besides, some men around him were still taller.
Wayne was about to leave his room, jacket draped over his shoulders, when his hand stopped on the door handle. He glanced back at his spacious room – the wide bed, the paintings hanging on the walls, the large desk where several screens still glowed, controllers still lying out in the open.
“Yakhlen...” he swore, adjusting his jacket. He hurried back to the desk, shutting everything down until the surface was clean, free of hovering icons. There was a ban on entering his room, but butlers didn't obey laws – even in his own home, he had to be cautious.
Damian rummaged through the desk drawers, found a small tube of lipstick, checked the contents – still enough. He slipped it into his jacket pocket. Then, unable to resist, he took his katana from the wall and tested its sharpness.
Satisfied that he had everything he needed and had hidden everything else, he finally left the room, closing the door behind him.
The estate was quiet. Just the distant hum of a vacuum cleaner. Alfred was busy. Good.
Wayne moved quickly to the staircase, scanning the surroundings, trying to glimpse the first floor as best he could. The path was clear. Out of the corner of his eye, he spotted the butler, Alfred, vacuuming with his back turned. Damian slipped past him, practically flying out into the fresh air like a bullet.
Outside, the weather was beautiful – almost too warm. He regretted his jacket. It was going to be unnecessary.
The road felt endless. Damian took off the jacket – the summer heat and his own nervousness were making him sweat. Somewhere out there, his ship was sailing remotely toward his base, carrying the triton. Soon, he would see the creature in person. Smell it. Touch it. Look inside it.
The thought was so thrilling that he could barely keep the car on the road.
Finally, the sea appeared on the horizon. He turned off the smooth road, dialled a number on his phone, and the earth split open, revealing an entrance. The car disappeared into the dark tunnel, and the earth closed again behind him, as if nothing had happened.
He killed the engine, practically fell out of the car, and ran to the pool. The surface was still. He hurried to the computers, which lit up the moment he entered the underground base. Screens showed the surrounding cameras.
No ship yet.
His heart hammered. He tapped nervously on the keyboard – a map appeared with a blinking red dot, moving slowly across the course. Everything was fine. He just had to wait a little longer.
At last, the torment of waiting ended. The cameras caught a red vessel – more like a giant fish than a standard submarine. Damian paced impatiently along the edge of the pool. The gentle patterns of the waves fell on his dark skin, and the emerald of his eyes shone brighter.
Finally, the iron beast surfaced from the pool. Damian ran to the other side to meet what the machinery would automatically pull out.
The triton lay inside a capsule, suspended in a state of artificial sleep. Damian had designed it to keep the creature under for as long as he wanted – until he himself chose to wake him.
He pulled the capsule slightly away from the pool, far enough so the wheels wouldn't accidentally tip it back into the water.
When the capsule was at a safe distance, he circled it to look at the triton.
He was larger than Damian had imagined. He was glad he'd built the capsule twice the size of the original specifications. The triton had room – almost too much room – inside this glass box.
Damian studied the monitors showing the creature's pulse. Stronger than a human's. But looking at that peaceful face, he noted: this was a triton at rest. When he woke, his instruments probably wouldn't be able to measure him accurately. He would have to fix that.
Damian leaned against the glass, his nose almost touching it. His breath fogged the surface.
He couldn't believe he had caught this creature. Could examine it so closely.
The gills rose and fell evenly, folding and unfolding with each breath.
Through the cameras, he hadn't been able to see the face properly. Through the lens, it had seemed like these creatures had no lips, no eyelashes, no distinguishing features on their skin.
Now, looking at the creature up close, he saw the delicate outline of full lips – surprisingly pale blue. The face, despite the blue and red scales, was pale. Almost grey.
What was most interesting: the coloured scales weren't separate parts. From the cameras, he'd assumed their skin was like a human's. But now he couldn't stop staring at how the grey shifted into blue, cyan, red. The triton was entirely covered in scales – and on some parts, they were larger, which explained why certain areas of colour stood out more sharply against the grey.
His eyelashes were long, clumped together from constant time in water, so they looked like sharp triangles framing his eyes.
The short hair seemed no different from Damian's own – but he wasn't sure. He wanted to touch it. Only after feeling it would he give his verdict.
Finally tearing his gaze from the face, Damian remembered he needed to transfer the triton to another capsule – one more suited for attaching sensors and monitoring brain activity.
When the creature was moved to the new tank, Damian felt a flash of jealousy toward the robotic arms that touched him, attaching the sensors. He had controlled them. But how he wanted to touch the triton himself.
He couldn't take the risk.
He didn't know if the scales were poisonous. Or how long the creature could survive on land.
But he wanted to know.
God, how badly he wanted to know.