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It’s soothing, being underwater. Like the world vanishes, replaced by the rush of blood in your ears. Like sinking into darkness to experience the buzz of life beyond the pools as something from within a dream. A distorted picture, glitching green and neon pink with the damage of sea salt scrubbing the camera’s processors clean.
Jason exhales, a burst of bubbles floating to the surface, popping one by one to merge with the open air. And beyond, the wobbly features of a pale, drawn face.
Jason clicks irritably and wedges himself more firmly between the rocks, making sure he’s snug and comfortable before relaxing again.
He’ll need to resurface eventually— has already been putting it off for a good hour— but the resentment burns in his veins like acid today, and even the soothing cold of the water can’t wash it away.
So, he waits.
The currents tug at him, the ebb and flow of the tides reduced to a gentle sway so far from the sea. The soft sand— imported, spread out, covering the rough stone of the cave floors— beneath his belly billows in small clouds in the pristine water.
It’s soothing. It’s calming. And it makes the hiss and snarl of the Green quiet to a dull sort of drone. Easy enough to ignore. Far enough away to pretend it’s the hum of the ocean.
But eventually Jason can’t put off the demand for air any longer, lungs seizing uncomfortably.
Well over one hour, and the vigilante is still sitting there like a statue. Unmoving. Watching.
It makes every instinct in his primitive hindbrain shriek in warning.
Dick’s silhouette doesn’t vanish. If anything, it seems to grow even closer when Jason grudgingly slips out from his resting place and drifts closer to the surface.
Jason wonders if he gets a kick out of it. Wonders if now that he can’t stare at Jason’s skin day in and day out— suspended in that horrible glass case like the taxidermy corpse of a pinned up butterfly— this is the next best thing he has.
Jason takes a deep breath the moment his nose breaches the surface, blinking water out of his eyes, but doesn’t come out any further. Spitefully content to buoy half of his head above the water and glare balefully at the vigilante a few feet away.
“Hi,” Dick breathes, eyes wide and flitting all over Jason with wonder and a strange sort of melancholy twisting his features.
Jason snorts, paddling the water lazily with his hind flippers.
He can see it in Dick’s eyes. Can see how much the vigilante would love to get his hands on Jason’s pelt— still the pearly white of pups, unchanged with the trauma of death. See how much he itches to put it back behind that glass case and show it off like the tusks of an elephant, beautiful and pristine, and reeking of an agonizing descend into stillness.
Jason drags in another deep breath and sinks back below the surface, ignoring the vigilante’s crestfallen look.
They’ve been leaving him alone, here, down in the caves. When the pull of the ocean becomes too much to ignore.
The first time he caught Bruce watching him he’d been gearing for a fight, but the man just— paled. Watched. Stone faced and unmoving, much like Dick now. Watching, until Jason slipped back through the cave systems and out into the disgusting sludge passing for the water of Gotham Harbor.
Jason had expected the gig to be up at that point. No way the world’s greatest detective wouldn’t connect the pup sealskin stolen from that horrible glass case with the white seal suddenly showing up inside the caves only a few months after, but the next time they’d faced down in the streets— there had been no recognition in Batman’s eyes. Only fury and desperation over the loss of a stolen pelt. A lost trophy, like the dog tags of a dead soldier put on display.
Jason circles the pool, twisting and turning through crevices that used to be large enough to fit three of him and are now barely big enough to squeeze through, and then dives straight through the narrow opening between two rocks and into the expansive cave systems beyond, refusing to spare even one more glance at the blurry face above him.
He’s got places to be, people to torment. Nightwing being a creep isn’t going to stop him.
“I can see the appeal now, “Jason tugs at the white fur lining his leather jacket, grinning when both Nightwing and Batman lurch forward before stopping dead again when Jason tuts in reprimand and rips a tuft of it clean out, “Very fluffy, very warm. And pretty, too! Wanna know how many compliments I got on this piece alone? Almost makes me regret using only half of it for the jacket. The living room rug is almost a waste, like this.”
Nightwing snarls, throwing himself forward— only to be stopped by a gauntleted arm across his chest.
“What do you want, Hood?” Batman growls, and Jason cocks his head in faux innocent confusion.
“Who says I want anything? Maybe I just want to brag about my new jacket,” he grins, “And my new rug.”
Nightwing spits at him, and Jason laughs.
“Don’t pretend to care now, Bitchwing. At least I’m doin’ something with it instead of letting it catch dust in the basement. You should thank me, really.
“You know nothing, “Nightwing hisses, borderline feral in the way he strains against Batman’s restrictive hold, escrimas crackling dangerously, “You know nothing you despicable little—”
“Jesus,” Jason whistles, flipping the safety off the gun he keeps aimed at the tank chock-full of fear gas. Wearing a helmet with its own air filtration system sure comes in handy at times, “Just get yourself a new comforter off Ebay or something. Rich assholes like you surely know a guy or two who like shooting exotic animals in their free time, right?”
“Hood-”
“Oh wait! How about the new Robin? He part fish too? You could just put his skin up in there if you miss the previous one so badly.”
That seems to be the last straw.
Nightwing, in an impressive display of gravity defying acrobatics, flips clean over Batman’s arm with an enraged yell and throws an escrima stick at him before Batman manages to restrain him again, hissing something into the vigilante’s ear too low for Jason to catch.
Jason ducks just in time to avoid being electrocuted with enough volt to down a whale, tutting disappointedly, “Now, now, that wasn’t nice. What if you hit my brand-new jacket?”
“What is your price…” Batman grits out, looking pained, “In return for the pelt?”
Jason’s eyes narrow, fury coiled low in his gut like a pit of vipers waiting to strike. “What piece you talkin’ about, old man? My pretty jacket, or the fur rug?”
“All of it,” Batman snaps, true fury making his voice pitch more towards Bruce than Batman.
“Greedy,” Jason remarks idly, “Don’t anybody teach you that sharing is caring?”
“It’s not a toy. And without consent to share, it’s just stealing-”
Jason shoots the concrete at their feet, effectively shutting Batman up.
“Do not talk to me about consent!” he shouts, refusing to huddle into the hollow comfort of his jacket.
His pelt is at his safe house. Safe. With enough security against even metas that Superman would have trouble breaking into it. His sealskin is safe. Safe.
Batman’s mouth draws into a thin line, his distraction allowing Nightwing to rip free of his hold to resume his poised stance, the white outs of the domino lenses tracking every minute twitch of Jason’s body. Looking for an opening.
Jason isn’t inclined to give him any.
“You think I don’t know what it is?” he challenges, leveling the gun back at the tank.
The shipment of drugs and weapons coming in from the docks should all be underway to their intended buyers. This little distraction turned out to be more effective than even Jason had anticipated.
With the unfortunate side effect of making him genuinely angry.
“You know, I couldn’t believe my luck, seeing that thing just hanging there. A fortune in a glass case.”
Nightwing’s lips curl ever so slightly, something manic and dangerous in the way he inches around Batman despite Jason’s avid demonstration that the gun he’s holding isn’t just for decoration purposes only.
Always the Golden Boy, this one. Always so eager to martyr himself for the cause. To be the righteous man in a crowd of sinners.
Jason hates him so much.
“I was coming there for the suit, originally,” he continues, keeping his helmet deliberately angled at Batman while the HUD does its job of tracking the other vigilante’s movements, “Collect some pretty memorabilia,repurpose it,” he sneers the last part, delighting in the way the cowl twitches. Batman is angry, furious. And Nightwing looks like he wants to kill Hood.
Jason isn’t sure what they’re currently imagining, doesn’t really care either way, but the vindictive pleasure of seeing them so close to breaking point is its own reward.
“Imagine my surprise when I found a selkie’s skin instead. Fluffy and pup-white,” a morbid part of him wants to laugh at the way Batman visibly goes through a number of breathing exercises, “A selkie’s skin alone? In that condition? Damn, that’s an easy four hundred grand already. But a pup skin? That one easily sells for eight.”
“I can give you double that-”
“We’re not talking money here, dipshit,” Jason interjects heatedly, “We’re talking consent, remember? And how that’s a rich thing coming from you when you’re in possession of a pup’s sealskin. Or you wanna try and tell me it’s rightfully yours?”
“Hood,” Batman tries again, the growl in his voice belying the calm he’s trying to project, but before he can say more— try to justify himself, Jason shakes his head.
“I’m done talking,” he says coolly. “You want it back so badly? Fucking come and take it from me.”
Nightwing rushes at him with a yell, but Jason pulls the trigger even faster.
The tank explodes in a cloud of toxic gas, and Jason only sticks around long enough to witness Batman and Nightwing fail to put on the rebreathers in time.
He hopes the trip will make them kill each other in a fear induced frenzy.
But he’s never that lucky.
Jason’s phone is stuck on the open chat with Orm. The last text message, several years old by this point, simply reading: “Is it true?”
There’s none after that.
Because Jason was dead.
So… that had probably been answer enough.
Jason types out short and stupid “Hi”, deletes it before he can hit send, then types it out again, deletes that too, types out a simple “yes”— and then backs out of the messenger app completely, without hitting send.
Orm’s not gonna remember the stupid selkie that got himself killed, either way.
Dick is in the water the next time Jason squeezes through the tight tunnels and into the cave pools.
The vigilante is drifting like flotsam in the shallows, wearing nothing but those ridiculous swimming trunks printed with stylized seals— the ones Jason got him for his birthday, once upon a time.
A rush of bubbles drift to the surface with the force of Jason’s exhale, and then he paddles closer slowly. Very slowly. Flipping himself on his back to get a better view at the human.
Dick doesn’t enter the pools. Neither do Bruce, or the Replacement. Ever.
They watch him when he’s down here, yes. Always watching. But in all these months— none of them had ever even dared touching the waters while he’s swimming in them. Is this the end of their uneasy truce? Are they denying him even this little sanctuary?
But Dick doesn’t react. Doesn’t seem to notice his presence. Or if he does, he makes no move to leave or attack or— do something. Jason isn’t sure what his endgame is.
In the water, without gear, going against a Selkie? Dick would have better chances with a fucking shark.
Jason floats closer, carefully, squinting up at the pale shape above him. Too pale, he realizes with an uneasy pang. Much too pale for someone with Dick’s natural tan that always makes him look like he spends half his day bathing in the sun.
The faint blue sheen to the tips of his fingers doesn’t bode well, either.
Humans aren’t made for swimming in cold waters, never mind drifting in them like half-forgotten trinkets for however long it’s been. They don’t have any protective layers for insulation the way Selkies do. Or any marine mammals.
Jason chitters to himself, equal parts angry and disturbed. Had Dick hit his head a little too hard during patrol? Is that why he thought cooling off in the cave pools was the logical conclusion? And where the fuck is Bruce? Alfred?
The figure above him jolts so abruptly that even Jason startles, fight or flight instinct kicking in hard and making him freeze up in the process.
Suddenly Dick is turning on his stomach, face down in the water, eyes wide open in a grotesque bid to look below.
And Jason knows, logically, that all Dick’s poor human underwater vision will show him is a blob of white fur at most, but he can’t help but feel like those blue eyes are staring straight into his own.
For a few seconds they’re at a stalemate, just— looking at each other, stunned.
And then Dick starts flailing and, wow, yeah, there’s something seriously wrong because his strokes are sluggish and stiff with prolonged exposure to the cold water, and Jason has to fight back the instinctual response that evokes to keep from doing something monumentally stupid. Like, help the human back to solid ground.
There’s hand, then. Reaching out. Reaching for him. Trembling and pale and cold and—
Jason turns tail and bolts, cutting his swimming session short.
This was always a long shot, anyway.
He’ll figure out something else.
Jason hopes he’s hallucinating.
“Where is it?” The Replacement demands, all five-foot-five of righteous anger and buzzing anxiety.
Which, fair enough, considering Jason’s got the muzzle of a gun shoved under the kid’s jaw.
“Little cuckoo’s got nerves, coming all the way onto my turf,” he drawls, clicking the safety off, “Don’t daddy bats tell you birds that fly too far from the nest get their wings clipped?” Jason pauses, “Or burnt?”
Robin glares, eyes flashing with fury, but he makes no move to twist away. Something that absolutely doesn’t bode well considering Jason isn’t doing much to keep him here.
If you don’t count the gun, that is. But Robins never know how to judge danger correctly until they’re trapped between the cat’s teeth.
Still, this isn’t right. Jason had a plan. And the Replacement is screwing it all up. He was banking on the Bat sending his shiny new toy soldier to the Tower, but instead he came knocking on Jason’s door like a sacrificial lamb.
Demanding Jason’s skin.
“What, misplaced your stuffed toy?” He snarls, pressing the muzzle harder into the soft skin of the kid’s throat. Because apparently, it’s not enough to steal his suit, no. Now the Replacement also wants his fucking pelt.
Fuck, shooting him would be so easy right now. And so satisfying.
“I’m not in the mood for games, Hood,” the Replacement growls. Or tries. It’s more like a hissy little raccoon trying to be intimidating.
“What a coincidence,” Jason drawls, crowding into Robin’s space menacingly, “Neither am I.”
The kid just keeps glaring, fists curling but posture relaxed. Preparing for something, though Jason isn’t sure for what. The tabs he keeps on Batman and Nightwing are still firmly placing the two in Diamond District. Too far away to be of any help to their wayward fledgling.
“I want the coat,” Replacement repeats, like Jason hadn’t heard him the first time. Then the boy grimaces, “Or what’s left of it.”
“Cut it, Boy Wonder,” they’re all starting to sound like a broken record. Give it back, Hood. It doesn’t belong to you, Hood. Like they’ve got any claim to a selkie’s skin at all. Displaying it like some fucked up hunting trophy along with the suit he died in. “Batman and Nightwing both tried already. But perhaps I should thank you, coming here and all. Saves me a trip to smoke you outta your nest. Been missing some feathers for the pretty fur rug.”
The kid knocks the gun aside with lightning speed, a fist heading straight for the gap where the helmet ends and a strip of unprotected skin peeks through.
Jason catches the fist in his own, twisting ruthlessly until the Replacement whines low in his throat from the pressure threatening to snap his delicate bird bones.
It’s a real shame nobody can quite appreciate the puns these days.
“So eager to follow your predecessor?” He growls, slamming the vigilante back into rusty AC unit. Robin doesn’t rise to the bait, but Jason can see him gnash his teeth in badly concealed anger.
“Just tell us what you want!” Robin snaps, “Make your demand, and we’ll work something out!”
So righteous. So naïve. If someone doesn’t take the initiative to beat that out of him, the little bird will crash from sky high to below the ground.
“I want Batman to go fuck himself with a rusty spoon,” Jason bites out, “And Joker’s head on a platter. Maybe even with a cute little bow tie, but I’ll settle for something less classy if you’re fresh out of decorating materials.”
Robin’s expression spasms, and Jason blinks away a warning from his HUD, signifying the imminent approach of the Baby Bird’s babysitters.
“Shouldn’t you know, groupie?” Replacement gripes, snapping his foot out in an impressive display of resourcefulness as a hidden blade emerges from the sole.
Jason must jump back to avoid a blade buried in some very delicate areas, allowing the wayward fledgling to slip away to the edge of the roof.
“Joker hasn’t been seen for two years,” Replacement recites, echoing every single file Jason had highjacked from the Bat servers. “Your idol is gone.”
Idol… geez, the Replacement is just begging to be shot.
But Jason isn’t buying this. Joker doesn’t just vanish. Something evil like that— it’s hiding somewhere. Planning. Scheming. Or maybe locked up in maximum security, courtesy of the Justice League. Jason doesn’t care. What he cares about is Joker’s head, preferably separate from his body, handed to him by one of the Bats.
He still won’t give his sealskin back to them, obviously. But maybe he’ll allow them a look. There’s a fat chance of zero percent this is gonna happen either way. May as well make concessions.
“I’m sure you’re resourceful enough to track him down,” Jason tells him sweetly, another warning popping up on the HUD alerting him to Batman being two minutes out. Nightwing hot on his heels.
Jason lunges.
Robin’s domino lenses widen in surprise, clearly not expecting someone of Jason’s stature to be capable of such fast movements, and then he’s got the little bird by the scruff of his cape, dangling him over the steep drop of a twenty-story building.
To his credit, Robin doesn’t struggle or panic, he just keeps glaring like the picture of the perfect, defiant Boy Wonder. Ever so brave in the face of death.
He wonders if that face would still be so brave and spiteful if he was watching the timer of a bomb tick down to zero.
Jason leans in until they’re almost nose to nose—or, well, nose to helmet.
“Find him for me, Pretender,” he growls, “Find him, and maybe I’ll make you a deal.”
Then he lets go, and Robin drops through the air with nothing but a short, echoing gasp.
Somewhere close, Nightwing screams.
Jason turns away with a scoff, the blinking dots on his HUD allowing him to pinpoint the exact moment Batman plucks the bird safe out of free fall.
They’re always in time for this one.
In much the same way they could never be assed to be in time for him.
Despite his better judgement, Jason swims back to the cave when the pull of the sea becomes too much to ignore.
Leaving Gotham is simply too much of a risk with his grip over Crime Alley not iron tight, and the thought of swimming in the ocean without anybody watching his back is— unpleasant.
He won’t risk being taken prisoner in his own skin ever again.
Dick is sitting at the edge of the water as opposed to swimming in it like last time, but this time the Replacement is there also.
They’re arguing, it seems. A heated back and forth that ends with Dick staring down at the water’s surface stubbornly, and the cuckoo slinking away silently after it becomes apparent that the saintly Nightwing considers their conversation to be over.
Jason waits for a while, wedged between a cluster of stones and shielded from view, before curiosity gets the better of him and he paddles slowly upwards, the top of his head breaching the surface with a gentle exhale.
Dick… smiles at him. Incongruous with his feral rage earlier tonight, when Hood led them on a merry goose chase around the Bowery with taunts of fur boots and gloves.
With all the evidence pointing him in one direction… Jason can no longer deny that they truly haven’t drawn the connection between the white seal splashing around the cave every other week, and the murderous crime lord flaunting a “stolen” white Selkie pelt.
And it doesn’t make any sense. Jason may hate them from the bottom of his twice dead heart, but he knows they aren’t stupid. The first dip that got him caught in here should have been enough to tip them off.
“Hi, Jay,” Dick says, wringing his hands like he has to consciously keep them occupied to refrain from… what?
Or maybe he’s giving them too much credit. With how much time the vigilante spends just staring holes into the water, there can’t be much of a brain in that stupid head of his.
Not to mention the sneaking suspicion that he’s been upgraded from strange-Selkie-in-the-cave to ghost-Selkie. Which is… a new one. Interesting.
Dick’s mouth ticks up into a little smile, “You doing okay?”
Jason blows a bubble at him.
Dick nods as if they’re holding an animated conversation, shifting his weight to the side, “We changed the water filters the other day. Insane amounts of sludge in there again, totally disgusting. B ran a test on it and we’re thinking Black Mask might have started dumping Scarecrow’s chemicals in the harbor again. Would explain Crane’s hissy fit the other day, at least. And how Hood tracked down an entire tank of it so quickly.”
Yeah, definitely no brain. Jason figured that one out weeks ago. Are they too busy playing catch with him around Gotham to keep up to date on their cases? Pathetic.
“And… I’m sorry you had to see that argument just now. Tim means well. He’s- he’s a great kid, Jay. You would have loved him.”
Jason sincerely doubts that.
“He’s just worried. He doesn’t understand that you don’t like swimming alone.”
Jason snorts, flippers slapping the water pointedly. He stopped relying on the protection of others years ago.
The vigilante grimaces.
“I know, that’s not why you- I promise, we’ll get it back. Hood gets to keep your pelt over my dead body, Little Wing, I swear it.”
Now there’s an idea…
Dick laughs, then. Mirthless and self-deprecating in a way uniquely Dick Grayson that makes something uncomfortable twinge in Jason’s rib cage. Indigestion, probably. He really shouldn’t have eaten that leftover sushi before coming here.
“Constantine said this… happens, sometimes, when nature magic is involved. That there can be… residues when someone isn’t at rest. And I know I shouldn’t-” Jason watches with mild curiosity as Dick stumbles through the words while the selkie is floating quite comfortable just ways off the shallows, cataloguing how the vigilante’s lip trembles and his hands fist into the hem of his shirt, eyes tracking Jason with a strange sheen to them.
He remembers a time when he—in his youthful, endless stupidity and naivety—would drape his sealskin over Dick’s shoulders when he was sad, lost on how to provide comfort in any other way. It had been instinct. A piece of his soul, the purest and rawest form, offered trustingly in a demonstration of boundless affection. He’d trusted Dick. Trusted them. And look where it got him.
“I don’t want you to leave again,” Dick confesses, and Jason’s head tips briefly underwater with the force of his disbelieving snort.
“I know it’s selfish,” he continues, voice hollow. The smile is gone. “I know it is, but I still—” Dick looks away, “Don’t worry. I wouldn’t- We’re getting it back, Little Wing. We’re getting it back, and you can… rest, again.”
Jason turns with a splash, vanishing into the cold, dark water before the first crocodile tear can leave a track down Dick’s face.
He’s been here long enough, the need to swim freely properly sated for another week at the least. And his stomach isn’t feeling too good, anyway.
It’s indigestion, he thinks angrily. Indigestion, and nothing more.
Jason stares at the file, uncomprehending.
Tim glares at him, ever defiant and obnoxious in a way only Robin can be. But this time… the need to wring his scrawny little neck is curiously absent.
“There,” Tim gestures angrily at the folder Jason is holding like he’s not sure whether it’s gonna grow teeth and try to bite him at any second. “That’s your proof. He’s gone. The highjacked ship vanished on the Atlantic in October twenty-two. There are no reports anywhere around the globe that would link back to Joker. Harley Quinn’s intel matched those reports. The Rogues all had a party about it a year ago.”
Jason just keeps—staring. Reading.
Joker. Missing, presumed dead. An elaborate report on ship debris recovered along the Coast of the Keys all the way up to Miami.
No body.
Still, there’s… something, niggling in the back of his mind about it.
The ocean is vast. So very vast.
Selkies aren’t the only creatures swimming in it.
“Is this enough for you?” Tim presses, smartly keeping himself well out of reach. But Jason is no fool, and neither is Robin. The baby bird learnt his lesson from their last encounter, and he can see the gleam of birdarangs in the hand the kid keeps angled out of sight.
Jason throws the file back at Robin, trusting his HUD to have recorded everything in high enough detail to make the physical thing obsolete.
The kid catches it one handed and tucks it away into hidden pocket Jason doesn’t remember having on his suit back then.
Well, new models deserve new upgrades. Batman’s aways been particular in keeping his gadgets up to date.
“All it told me is that you still have no fucking clue where he is, Replacement.”
Tim’s lips thin in anger.
“We had a deal, Hood.” He growls. “Joker is dead. Drowned, or eaten by sharks. Now give back the pelt!”
“No,” Jason counters easily, “I said ‘Kill him or him and maybe I’ll make you a deal’. But considering you managed neither, be grateful I’m allowing you to leave Crime Alley with all your limbs intact.”
“No, you can’t do this. How do you expect me to find someone who’s probably been eaten or sunk to the bottom of the friggin Atlantic, Hood? Why is this pelt so important to you?”
Jason scoffs, readying his grapnel.
“I thought you were supposed to be the smart one. Figure it the fuck out, Replacement.”
Jason hits send before he can chicken out and shoves the phone in his pocket, fully intending to go about business as usual and not look at the display until the end of patrol, but barely three minutes later the device buzzes, just once, and his resolve splinters.
Who are you?
The text reads, proving Jason right. Orm doesn’t remember him.
He… shouldn’t have expected him to. Humans live comparatively short lives, and selkies are no exception. Usually die even sooner than the average human thanks to exploitation and fishing nets and their own reclusive nature.
He’s as good as a blip in the long life of an Atlantean.
But he’d thought maybe… Orm had been the one to show him the ocean, once. One of Jason’s best friends, regardless of how much Bruce disliked him.
It doesn’t matter. Jason knew what to expect.
Sorry, wrong number. He types back, and that’s that. At least this way he won’t have to keep wondering.
There’s a new shipment coming in from the dock’s tonight, courtesy of Black Mask. If he plays this right, he can intercept the handoff and piss Sionis off as a-
Jason almost jumps when his phone lights up with an incoming call, a familiar number displayed on the screen in bright, white digits.
He hesitates long enough for every normal person to hang up… but the phone doesn’t stop ringing, and eventually Jason accepts the call with a mental ‘fuck it’. He refuses to run with his tail between his legs because of a stupid call. Most likely, Orm just wants to know how he got his number or something.
The call connects with a click, and not a beat passes before Orm’s chilly demand of “Who are you?” reaches his ear.
The Atlantean sounds exactly how he remembers. Posh and distant and inherently suspicious of everything around him that does not fall into the category of close friend or family. And even with family it’s a toss-up.
Jason exhales softly, feeling embarrassingly unbalanced by the familiarity of that voice.
For him, it always meant safety. Protection. From humans and sea dwelling creatures alike.
But Jason was a naïve little kid back then, and he had to find out the hard way that nowhere is safe. The only protection he can rely on is the one he provides himself.
“Wrong number,” Jason says roughly, fully intent on cutting the call and be done with it-
“Jason?” Orm asks carefully, tone deceptively neutral.
Jason blanks, static filling his ears.
“Jason,” Orm repeats. No question this time. His silence was answer enough. “Where are you? Are you safe?”
The scoff is involuntary, automatic. “I’m never safe,” he says bitterly, one hand buried in the soft white fur of his pelt. It doesn’t feel right, to leave it behind every time he goes out. But risking it being damaged while he’s fighting Gotham’s scum feels worse.
“Where are you?” the Atlantean asks again, his voice taking on a steely edge. “Jason, I was told you’d died. Tell me where you are.”
What is he even supposed to say to that?
“I did die.”
There’s no sharp inhale over the phone. No noise of disbelief. It’s… a little confusing, actually. To be taken at face value. Then again, the Atlantean’s probably seen weirder shit.
Or maybe he’s just indifferent.
“He killed me.”
“Bruce?” Orm’s voice is dangerous. Deadly. And it shouldn’t, but the skittish, perpetually anxious part of Jason that’s been buzzing since the day he’d crawled out of his grave… quiets. Settles.
“Joker.”
The name doesn’t evoke the usual green tinted mix of anger and terror in his chest, but it’s still enough to drive a spike of instinctual unease through him.
Still… he needs to know. It’s likely Orm doesn’t know anything about it, the ocean is so vast, after all. But unless Jason knows for sure, he will not stop. Can’t stop.
“He killed me. It hurt.”
The Atlantean’s exhale this time crackles quietly over the speakers, but it takes a few seconds for him to respond.
“My brother… told me the basics. What little he knew. I am sorry, Jason. I should have been there.”
Jason blinks, surprised.
“You couldn’t have known. You weren’t—you didn’t know.”
“We are honor bound to protect the last of your kind, you know this. You trusted me. I failed you.”
“It wasn’t you that failed me. The clown wanted to get at Batman. He didn’t even know what I am, and he didn’t know you.”
“No, he did not,” Orm says darkly, “But that was rectified rather quickly.”
Jason’s fingers clench around the phone, his heart jumping into a staccato rhythm, “What are you talking about?”
Orm hums, “The land dweller made the unfortunate decision to traverse part of the Atlantic by means of a boat and met his fate off the coast of… Florida, I believe it is called.”
“Did you-” Jason can’t breathe. “Did he-...?”
“He suffered,” the Atlantean confirms. “I made sure of it.”
He has to sit down, then, pulling the pelt around his shoulders like armor against—a terror that is dead. Gone. No longer—
What is he supposed to do now? He was- he was going to make Bruce choose. Give him one last chance to demonstrate- What is he going to do now?
Why didn’t… Bruce is a control freak. Why did none of them try to find out what happened to Joker before this? Did it matter so little? Did Jason matter so little? Yes, yes, he did. He knows that. But—Nothing is making senseright now.
Joker is dead.
Orm killed him.
Bruce can’t kill him.
“-ason?”
“I’m here,” he replies automatically, a subconscious part of him responding instantly to the mild onset of concern in the usually so unflappable Atlantean. “Just…. Thinking.”
“Are you safe?” Orm asks again, more insistently this time, “Where are you? Is your family with you?”
“I have no family. My family let me die. The took my skin and put it on display with the suit I died in. They let the Joker go.”
There’s a beat of stunned silence, a beat in which Jason huddles deeper into the comfort of his pelt and curls up like a child against the wall of his safe house, looking out at the far window overlooking part of the Alley. Flashes of light in the distance signal the approach of a thunderstorm, a perfect and natural cover for gunshots. If Jason cared for silencers.
“They took your skin,” Orm’s voice is flat, but Jason recognizes that tone. It’s the same one he’d taken with Bruce when he’d believed Jason was being trafficked by the billionaire.
Foreboding. Cold. Calculating. Fury.
Jason only knows the basics of what transpired between Aquaman and his younger half-brother before their reconciliation, but he knows that Arthur did not have an easy time defeating Orm. And though he has mellowed out significantly since then, it is still testament that the Atlantean’s ire is not to be taken lightly.
“And where were you, when they did this?”
“Dead,” Jason says, rubbing his index over the little nick in pelt where he’d torn it on a stray fishing hook. He remembers crying for hours, inconsolable over the tiny but permanent damage to his sealskin. Bruce had sued several fishing companies operating by that spot the very next day and bought the rest.
Orm hums, contemplative.
“Are you in Gotham?”
“Yes.”
The Atlantean mutters something unintelligible, accentuated by a sudden rustle in the background, “This accursed city… Getting there will take me two days at least. Can you hold out for that long?”
Jason blinks, “You don’t have to. I have my pelt back. And Joker… is dead.”
“You are a fool to believe I will not come after believing you dead for three years,” Orm tells him bluntly, “Especially knowing you do not consider yourself safe in the Batman’s care.”
“I’m handling it-”
“Then you’re handling it wrong.”
Jason bristles, but before he can get a word in edgewise, Orm keeps talking.
“You are hurt, Jason. The betrayal of family is a wound that will never heal. You are not meant to doubt them, but now you inevitably do.” He pauses, “Rightfully so, but I dare say you aren’t done with them.”
The selkie wants to tell him just where Orm can shove his philosophical, ancient Atlantean bullshit, but it seems he’s far from done.
“You did not return to Gotham to seek vengeance against the Joker. You returned because you are invariably drawn to the family that was ripped from you. And despite your anger, your resentment, you long to go back to them.”
“I long to do shit-”
“Prove me wrong, then,” Orm interrupts him, ever so serenely, “Tell me you have talked to any of them without the shield of a disguise between you and came away unchanged.”
Jason grits his teeth. “Fuck off. This was a mistake. Good talk, glad to hear you didn’t totally forget about me. And thanks for the Joker, I guess.”
“Make no mistake, Jason. I still stand by it that land dwellers are… ill suited, to take care of a sea child. But Arthur was disturbed by what he witnessed in the wake of your death. Disturbed enough to turn the other way when I disposed of your murderer. And your brother’s agony was acutely enough felt that even mine suddenly developed the insufferable urge to invite me for dinner every other week. Surmise from that what you will.”
Jason keeps quiet, allowing a few minutes of silence to just… exist. Not really thinking of anything but how much he hates when Orm is trying to play mediator. He’s shit at it. Like Jason, he’s much better suited for strategic all-out war. Well, no. Orm is a born politician. But still, he’s shit at mediating.
“I’m grateful to have you back,” The Atlantean says eventually, when the silence threatens to shift from soothing into awkward. But his voice is softer now, almost affectionate, “Be safe, Jason. If I do not hear from you in a few hours, I will have my brother make it there much faster than I can.”
Fucking asshole, assuming Jason’s gonna fall for his bullshit and actually have a heart to heart with any of the Bats. What is this, kindergarten?
He hangs up without another word.
Dick is sitting at the water again.
It’s… a startingly familiar picture by now. Like a silent sentry at a tomb.
In the quiet of his mind, Jason can admit that this is the only reason he’s even entertaining this hare-brained idea. This… experiment.
More likely than not, nothing will come of it. But if it does—if it does…
It won’t. He’s just doing this to prove Orm wrong.
Jason takes a deep breath, closes his eyes… and sheds his skin.
It’s a strange feeling every time. Like having a piece of his soul slide free of his body, still there but… dormant. A second life waiting to be picked up again.
Jason finds purchase against the course stone of the cave pools, seal skin laying snug around his shoulders as he rises from the waters like Lazarus from the dead—which is a funny comparison, now that he thinks about it.
Dick jumps to his feet with a startled shout, drawing the attention of the other occupants of the cave farther away, and this time Jason doesn’t bolt. Doesn’t vanish back into the water.
He stands his ground, feeling overexposed and vulnerable with the cold water lapping at the autopsy scar across his torso, and draws his pelt closer in a weak semblance of a hug, chasing the lingering warmth of his other form within the soft fur.
It takes barely a minute for Bruce and the Replacement to come running, footsteps thundering along the trodden path between boulders and along steep cliffs. And in the meantime, Jason and Dick keep staring at each other. Or rather, Dick stares. A mix between aching hope and hysterical devastation.
“Bruce,” He calls again, broken, and shrill, taking a stumbling step backwards when Jason starts advancing slowly. “Bruce!”
Jason snorts softly, but he doesn’t stop.
He can hear Bruce, and Tim. Can hear Tim shouting for Dick, and the tense silence of Bruce’s approach. But with the pools tucked away into a remote corner of the cave it will still take them another minute are two at the very least to make it here.
Jason steps out of the water and Dick blanches, openly gaping at where he can see the water drip onto the floor.
“What-” Dick says weakly, going cross eyed when Jason finally comes to a standstill right in front of him.
It’s still a bit weird, being taller than him, bulkier. Dick Grayson always felt larger than life before-… before. Someone able to stand next to Superman and still rival his glow.
Now he seems… not frail. Never frail. But Jason can see the dark shadows under his eyes, the heart rending grief in the way his body curls towards Jason but his legs take another stumbling step away from him.
Maybe there’s something to Orm’s words, after all.
Jason reaches out slowly, allowing Dick enough time to draw away, to attack, to do… something. But instead, the vigilante just sucks in an audible breath, tracking the movement like he would a particularly vicious viper.
“Bruce…” he calls again weakly, more a quiet plea than anything.
And Jason can hear them even clearer now. Their footsteps, beating along the stone with more urgency the longer Tim’s cries for Dick go unanswered.
It’s now or never.
“Geez,” Jason says, lips quirking up into smile, “Don’t I at least get a ‘hello’ before you kick me back out? Or do you only like me when I’m all furry and seal-y?”
“Hello,” Dick breathes, still tracking the progress of Jason’s hand like a hawk as it comes to hover just barely over Dick’s own.
Jason chuckles, he can’t help himself. It is, objectively, not very funny, but if he doesn’t laugh… well, he’s a little afraid he may end up crying instead.
He grasps Dick’s hand, squeezing lightly, and the vigilante eyes grow wide like saucers as myriad of emotions flashes across his face, too fast to pinpoint but all of them displaying a similar quality of shock and disbelief.
A wounded sound tears out of Dick, high pitched and forlorn and gut wrenching enough to drive tears into the corners of Jason’s eyes, and then Dick’s arms are around him, locked tight and squeezing Jason to his chest like even Superman would have trouble making the vigilante let go again.
“Jason,” Dick gasps, sobs, foregoing the soft pelt around his shoulders completely to draw him in even more tightly by his shoulders. It must look comical, from the outside. Jason is a good couple inches taller than Dick, broader too, but it still feels like Dick is trying wrap him up so completely he wants to hide him from sight. “No, please, Jason- Little Wing…”
Jason exhales shakily, wrapping his own arms around Dick in turn and hiding his face against the vigilante’s shoulder. He must lean down to do so, another thing he knew to expect but that is still so jarring to experience when he remembers days where he didn’t even reach Dick’s collarbone standing on his tip toes.
“Easy, Dickface,” Jason grumbles, refusing to look up when he hears Bruce and Tim come to a screeching halt, “Don’t ruin my pelt with all your sniveling.”
Dick laughs wetly, squeezing even harder, and Jason yelps a little when the sealskin threatens to slide away and leave him embarrassingly bare.
“Jay,” he breaths, and Jason is about seventy percent sure the wetness against his hair isn’t all from the water anymore. Then, to the others, he adds: “Bruce, Tim, am I- is this real?” The arms around Jason tighten fearfully, “Please, I- is this real?
“Yes,” Tim chokes out somewhere out of sight, at the same time that Bruce faintly says, “Jason.”
Jason glances at them over Dick’s shoulder reluctantly. Taking in the Replacement’s ashen face, the way he’s hovering uncertainly at Bruce’s side. And Bruce’s face, stuck somewhere between painful hope and raw anger. It makes something inside Jason curl up with a pitiful whine.
He only realizes he’s trying to pull away and retreat into his sealskin when Dick stumbles along with him to the edge of the water, refusing to let go even as Jason’s pelt morphs to accommodate that subconscious yearning.
“No,” Dick gasps out, sounding near panic as he clings to Jason like his life depends on it, trying to sweep the pelt back from where it’s beginning to fuse with Jason’s shoulder, “No, don’t go. You can’t,” Then his head swivels around to the others, eyes wild.
“Go away!” he snaps at Bruce, at Tim, “You’re making him uncomfortable! Go away!”
The Replacement flinches, eyes flitting back and forth between Bruce and Dick. “Dick? I don’t think this-”
“Chum,” Bruce interrupts, carefully lifting his hands in a not-a-threat display, “Can you come here for a moment? We need to make sure-” Bruce glances at Jason, grimacing, “We need to make sure he’s okay, do you understand?”
Dick pauses, clearly thinking it over, and Jason is seized by the irrational vision of Dick pulling away only to allow Bruce to jump in and tear the pelt clean off his shoulders and hang it back up in that horrid glass case. But instead of the usual green tinged anger he expected... there’s only fear.
“Don’t leave,” he says quietly, one had fisting into the fabric of Dick’s shirt.
They have this one chance. He promised Orm he would give them this one chance. If Bruce tries to—Jason will leave. He will jump right back into the water and return to the ocean and not come back. Orm promised he would protect him. That Arthur would, too. Even from Batman.
Dick exhales audibly, one hand going to the back of Jason’s neck in a protective hold, “Never, Little Wing. Never,” To Bruce he adds, “I said, go away. Can’t you see you’re scaring him!?”
“Dick-”
“You’re the Red Hood,” Tim says. It’s not a question.
Jason huffs softly, comfortable to stay within Dick’s embrace, a shield between Bruce and himself. The sanctuary of the water at his back.
“Astute observation, Replacement,” he allows, holding the kid’s gaze defiantly. “What gave me away?”
Tim’s expression fractures, “Why- why would you do this to them?”
Ah, there it is. The hot coals of anger.
“You stole my skin,” he snarls, ignoring Dick’s noise of protest, “You kept it like it belonged to you and put it up for display like a fuckin’ hunting trophy!”
“Little Wing, no, we didn’t-”
“That’s not-”
“Jason would know we’d never-”
“Stop lying!” he tries to push away, to rage, but Dick’s hold on him is absolute, and the anger… is just anger. No green. Only fury and deep seated betrayal. And eventually he stops fighting, slumping back into the vigilante’s hold, “Just- fuckin’ stop already. I’d spent a year near comatose with the desperation for my skin. Mine. Only to find it here, in a fucking glass case.”
To Bruce, he adds, “‘Good Soldier’, that’s what it said. Good Soldier. Like a goddamn pet someone ran over. I thought you were my fuckin’ family-”
“Jason-”
“But I was just some convenient little stand-in, wasn’t I? Some exotic animal that was good at taking orders and dancin’ to your every tune. And then I got myself blown up,” a tick in Bruce’s jaw, “And you saw the grand opportunity to expand your menagerie of rich people trinkets. And six months later, voi-fucking-la, the next kid in spandex! This time an elite bred one, good on you.”
Tim ducks his head, shoulders hunched, and Jason has to take a deep breath lest he keeps going because—because this isn’t about the kid. It’s not Tim’s fault he fell for the lie of Robin’s magic and Bruce’s promise of protection. Jason’s been there, done that. And it cost him is life.
“I trusted you,” Jason says blandly. “All of you. I trusted you. And the first chance you got… you took my skin. Put it on display. You were my family-”
“I couldn’t bear to part from it,” Bruce cuts in, stone faced, looking like he’d rather go toe-to-toe with Bane than be here, but… there’s no anger in his voice, like Jason expected. Only a strange sort of wariness. “We buried— I didn’t realize, we didn’t put it… there, with you. It was still—” Bruce takes a deep breath, and in Jason’s arms, Dick shudders, “You left it in my study when you… left.”
Jason narrows his eyes.
He remembers, of course. He’s thought so much about that day over the years. He could probably recite the letter he left on Bruce’s desk word by word. All the vitriol and anger of a fifteen-year-old accused of murder…
And still he considered the manor the safest place for his sealskin.
“I found it still there after I… started working for WE again. We couldn’t—you left it there. I couldn’t bear to part from it.”
Dick chuckles wetly, still clinging to Jason like an octopus.
“He’s lying,” Dick tells him, but before Jason can gear up to start screaming at Bruce, he continues “It wasn’t him that couldn’t bear to take it back to you. I—I couldn’t let him do it. It was—it still felt like you-- like you weren’t really dead. Like you’d come running into the study any second, asking where—where—”
“It’s my fault,” Tim says suddenly, and Jason rolls his eyes.
Perfect, are they all going to play martyr now to protect Bruce from his mistakes? Is that the legacy of Robin?
“I’m serious!” Tim hisses, shaking off the warning hand Bruce puts on his shoulder with a glare. To Jason he says, “It was me. I—” he looks away ruefully, “When I first came here, I didn’t know about you being a… selkie. I went into B’s study and I… I took your pelt.”
Tim looks up, eyes wide and glossy and… fuck, Jason can’t fathom wanting to beat that face into the ground anymore, but the instinct to draw his skin closer to himself is still there.
“I didn’t know,” Tim pleads, sounding strangled and close to tears, “I didn’t mean to- it just looked really soft and—”
“Bruce lost it,” Dick explains gently, trying and failing to be subtle about coaxing Jason away from the edge of the water, “I did, too… So he put it in there. To keep it safe. To keep you safe. I’m sorry, Little Wing. You were never supposed to think we- Bruce screwed up with the case, trust me, I know, but… neither of us could bear to never see you again.”
Bruce closes his eyes, looking pained, “Stop this game, Hood. Please. Let Dick go.”
Tim blinks up at his mentor, confused, and even Jason huffs a disbelieving laugh.
“You don’t believe it’s me, do you?”
“Jason died,” Bruce says sharply, “My son died. I was there when he took his last breath. I held him in my arms. My son is dead.”
Jason blinks, irritation and anger bleeding away into confusion.
He thought—the foggy image of Bruce’s face, the feeling of arms lifting him up gently, so gently, the plea to-
“You told me to stay awake,” Jason recalls, dazed, and Bruce’s expression crumples, “You said- I had to stay awake, to breathe, but I couldn’t. It hurt. And then you told me to wake up, again and again, but—I was still awake. I think.” He blinks again, “I died, then, didn’t I? I don’t remember anything else.”
Dick heaves a great sob against Jason’s temple, clutching him ever tighter.
“Yes,” Bruce rasps, “I- I was too late.”
“Yeah, I know. I hoped you’d come for me down to the last second on that stupid countdown. But you didn’t.”
“I’m sorry, Little Wing, I’m so, so sorry.”
“Jason?” Bruce asks, full of tentative, aching hope as he starts advancing, stopping only for a second when Jason flinches slightly.
“Do you want a fucking ID-”
Jason wheezes, entirely unprepared for the way Bruce lunges and collides with both him and Dick in a tangle of limbs.
“Jason,” there’s a second arm slung around his shoulder from the side now, another hand on his nape, cradling both him and Dick against a broad chest. “Jaylad.”
It should feel restrictive, this hold. Jason should feel trapped. But he doesn’t. He just feels… like there’s a weight sliding away from his chest. Like he hadn’t realized his lungs were working at half capacity until this very moment.
Bruce hadn’t gone for his pelt. Even now he only brushes against it tangentially in a bid to hug Jason closer.
They don’t—they’re not trying to take his sealskin away from him.
Jason slumps into their hold, tension and residual fear draining out of him abruptly with the tidal wave of relif crashing over him.
He’s safe. His pelt belongs to him. The clown is dead. He’s safe.
“Jason?” Dick asks tremulously, shaking his shoulder with sudden alarm. “Jason? What’s wrong!?”
“Shut up, I’m having a moment,” he croaks, glaring over the vigilante’s shoulder at the watery shape of Tim hovering self consciously just out of reach, “Get over here already. It’s a fuckin’ group hug, apparently.”
Tim bites his lip, eyes flitting between them hesitantly even as Jason peels his hand away from Dick’s shirt to reach for him.
“Are you sure? I’m not-”
“That wasn’t a question, Replacement. March.”
Tim lurches forward like a puppet having its strings pulled, and Dick laughs, shifting his vice like hold on Jason only enough to make place for Tim to wriggle into the embrace and close rank again. “Always so cranky, Little Wing.”
“Dying doesn’t much improve the mood,” Jason snipes, refusing to feel bad when both Dick and Bruce flinch hard, “Now fuckin’ savor this. You get three more minutes. I came here to take a swim, and not to cuddle.”
Jason didn’t think it was possible, but Dick’s hold on him tightens even further, “No.”
“The fuck you mean, no, I—”
“Either you stay here, or I’m going in with you.”
“The water’s almost to freezing point, no way-”
“-think I’m going to let you out of my sight again-”
“-have a death wish-”
“Actually, the human body can-”
“-acement not-”
“Boys,” Bruce interjects, exasperated, but there’s a tremulous undercurrent in his voice that Jason can’t quite place. And he has yet to release his hold on Jason’s nape. “No arguing.”
“Yes,” Dick agrees, “No arguing. Let’s go upstairs!”
“The fuck, Dickface-”
“Alfred is making strawberry cake,” Tim throws in quietly.
There’s an expectant beat of silence-
Jason sighs, annoyed but defeated. The pull isn’t too bad at the moment, sated somewhat by the dive through the cave system. And if anything, if Orm doesn’t hear back from him in a few hours tops Bruce will have an angry Atlantean knocking down the front door.
“Fine. But one of you is gonna have to get me some pants. I’m not goin’ upstairs dressed in just my pelt.”