Chapter Text
When the mer-pup was born, he was given a name. A good, strong name, one belonging to a Great King of their great city. It was a popular name at the time, and his father had protested, wanting something more unique for his firstborn son, but his wife had insisted. Perhaps if the pup had grown up with them he’d have had his own opinion, but his name was lost to the currents a long time ago.
The first two years of the pup’s life were typical. His father was a palace guard and his mother stayed at home to look after him and his two older sisters, he would not know them long enough to learn their names—he would not know any of this long enough to remember where he came from. In the future all he will know is the vague feeling of swimming free, something so impossible and immense to him that he'll have believed he dreamed it.
But it was no dream. For the first two years of his life, the pup was free.
And then he wasn’t.
The day the Human raiders attack is the worst day of his parents' lives. Three of their then four children had gone out to play, their eldest daughters insisting on bringing their little brother despite the fact he could barely swim on his own, swearing up and down that they’d keep him safe. Their mother had been amused, delighted that her children wanted to spend time together. She imagined how that might change as they grew, as their brother began to feel stifled by their babying. She worried for what might be said, what she might have to deal with. She shouldn’t have looked so far in the future.
The three pups were ambushed on the reefs outside the city, the first victims of what would be known as ‘the great sorrow’. Her eldest tried to fight off the attackers while the other sped off with her son. According to the girls he cried so loudly that it was impossible for her to hide, the humans found them easily. They took her son, they injured her eldest so horrifically that the healers were unsure she'd live for what felt like aeons. Her baby girl pulled through, one side of her tailfin lost, permanently disfigured, but alive.
Their mother sean to the seabed and did not get up for days once they were all out of danger, mourning the loss of her first son. Their father took days off to hand feed her, it was the only way she wood eat—the only way she'd survive, and he could not raise their three children alone in the wake of such a loss without his mate.
None of them ever recover from the loss of their son. While it is typical of their species to have at least five kids to form a proper pod, their mother could not bear the thought of having another, not when her little one could still be out there.
The patrols searched, and they discovered that the babies (babies, because they only took babies) were now on land. There was no hope for their return, not when their city was made of only tailed mer, not when the legged mer closest to them were hostile. Their babies had been taken where they could not possibly follow. They were Lost.
She knew that, but it still cemented in her that she would never again carry, even as her mate’s family gently pushed for an heir. Her son was Lost, and there would never be another.
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The pup does not remember any of that, and never will.
His first memories are of being in the cage. It’s more of a barrel, but the other creatures call their prisons cages, so he learns to do the same. In time the memories of even this will go hazy, and he’ll forget most of the details, but they are his beginning.
He is smart for his age, he picks up their language quickly. It is not too dissimilar to the language he doesn’t remember, and there is not much else to pay attention to.
Later he will deduce he was in a ship, being illegally transported across the world to France. But at that moment all he understands is that the legged mer took him from “his world” and are bringing him to another.
The mer goes through many worlds. The barrel on the ship is traded for a see through one in an exotic pet shop. It’s smaller than the barrel, his tail is always folded, he cannot move except to poke his head or tail above water for inspection by the customers. It’s all very confusing, he just wants to leave, to swim, like in his dreams, even if he doesn’t really know how. He’d settle for just knowing where he is, what he is, who he is, but if he speaks they hurt him, and so he keeps quiet.
While it is a blink in his existence that he will eventually hardly remember, the time he spends trapped in that glass cage feels like forever. At one point one of the legged mer starts calling him something he learns is a name, but she is gone before he can ask her to say it while he is above water so he can hear her properly.
It’s soon after the she leaves that he is taken to another new world.
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For the four year old mermaid in the tank, the world was big enough he could touch one end with the pointed edges of his tailfins and the other with the tips of his fingers. It wasn’t much deeper either, but the fact he could stretch at all was thrilling, and they didn’t punish him at all when he trilled his happiness. The legged mer that poked at his glass and gave him fish and an assortment of strange meats didn’t ask much of him, and he was content with that.
It was boring, and a little lonely, but they were nice to him. Back at the shop there had been others like him, and they’d learn to play games by blowing bubbles and swishing their fins. In this new world, there was no one but the legged mers, who didn't hurt him, but didn't play with him either.
He almost couldn't believe his senses when he was moved to a larger world, so big he could move around almost as freely as in his dreams (It wasn't all for him of course, he was only allowed in there sometimes) and all he had to do to keep the space was learn a few tricks. It wasn’t a word he'd known before. but they were patient and so kind to him, and fed him if he did well; Sometimes they even pet his hair, spoke to him for no reason, kept him company without hurting him, and eventually he could fly!. He liked this new world.
They moved around a lot. He never saw when they did but the feeling of being on a truck was the same as that of a ship for a mer in a tank. But despite the constant moving, they were always in the same place when he ‘performed’. He wondered if the legged mer ever got frustrated trying to outrun it, but they seemed happy every time he saw them, so perhaps outrunning it wasn't the goal. Whatever, it wasn't his business what the legged-mer were doing, he just had to perform his tricks.
Different legged mer would come to watch him fly when he was allowed into the bigger world to perform. He loved the way they looked at him, smiling and laughing and clapping in the way he’d been taught meant they were pleased, that it made them happy to watch him. That made it worth all the training and the difficult tricks and harsh landings. It even softened the blow every night when he had to be returned to his smaller world. If that was what he was going to do forever and ever, he would've be content with it.
But bad luck is his oldest friend, and it catches up to him eventually.
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The mer was six when everything changed.
It’s a ‘witch’ who curses him. He'd seen her at his performance that night, she did not smile or clap or laugh like everyone else, and seemed rather unimpressed. It made him upset, but it was hardly the first time someone had looked at him disapprovingly, so he let it go in favour of thinking of his next show.
She did not let herself be forgotten.
The witch showed up to his tank in the dead of night and whispered a few words that had burning pain searing through his body, until he choked and coughed and suddenly the water was stifling, and he couldn't breathe. She sealed away his fins and gills and gave him the skin and lungs of a normal human (not ‘legged mer’, legged mer can breathe in water, and evidently he couldn't anymore). She neglected to fix his vocal cords, but that hadn’t stopped him from mimicking human speech before.
The Humans were more than suprised when they found a shivering naked boy crying on the floor outside the tank their expensive hard-working merman used to sleep in. They didn't really know what to do with a random human child, they agonised over who they should turn him over to, what magicians they could hire to fix him him being human impacted their profits, the merman was a significant draw, and they couldn't afford another, but they ruled out the possibility of curse-breaking it wasn't in the budget. They debated dropping the child at the nearest orphanage, but the trapeze artists offered to make him part of their act.
The trapeze artists—John and Mary Grayson—gavr him a name, “Richard” and then started calling him their son. He’d been upset about it at first (it’s a lie, why are they lying?), but when he saw how much it saddened them when he pulled away, he began to lean into it.
Learning to walk was harder than swimming. Sometimes it felt like all he could do was fall because of how heavy he was. The air was so heavy, the human’s world so oppressive and cold. Why couldn't he just go back to his world where it was light and floaty and everything was as its always been—
The Graysons—Dick’s (a ‘nickname’, they said. Why would they give him one name just to call him another?) parents taught him lots of things about the human world, including a few different languages and of course, what they did as part of the ’circus’. When they told him they’re called the flying Graysons his eyes lit up. He didn’t think it was possible to fly in this heavy, overbearing world.
But they did, and it was incredible, and they offered to teach him too! They couldn't bring back his old world, but with their guidance, the new world didn't feel all that bad.
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Over the next four years he became embarrassed by how ignorant he was. How could there be a whole planet out there he didn’t know about? How could he have let himself be confined when there was so much out there to live for?
Dick’s mom and dad smiled and hugged him when he asked them why he was locked up for so long if he had a brain and feelings like them. Their answer was, “you didn’t, silly! Mer can’t think properly, they’re animals, like Zitka. Zitka can’t roam around freely, can she? That would be a bit funny!”
It made sense at the time. He only became smart when he got legs after all. And so he let it go.
Maybe if John and Mary Grayson had lived a little longer, Dick would’ve been able to confront them about that. Maybe they’d learn with the new research that found Mers on the intelligence levels of humans, if not significantly higher. Maybe they’d have apologised profusely and held him tight, and become activists to advocate for the new laws that came into effect when Aquaman used his influence to outlaw mer-trafficking across the Americas and eventually the whole world. Maybe they wouldn’t believe it to protect their perception of the past, and he’d have to beg and plead with them to even accept a modicum of error in their views, “If I was an animal meant to be in a cage, could you not have released me back to where I came instead of displaying me? Did Zitka deserve to be whipped and torn from her mother as a child? Did I deserve that? Did my real family deserve to lose me? Can you accept that at the very least, what happened to me was animal cruelty?”
But of course, he would never get that chance. Because when Dick was nine years old, they fall.
They fall because the rope was tampered with oh my god who did that why would they do that why are they falling it's so high, and for a split second in his panic, Dick’s mind calms as he remembers there is a pool, they will fall in the water and the act will be ruined and everyone will be upset and it’ll hurt like hell like it always does, but they’ll be fine.
And then they’re not. They fall and there’s no pool, because they are not mers, and neither is he, and he hasn’t been for a long time. Dick’s family is dead, and he is alone again, in a much bigger world where his future is more uncertain than ever.
This is where Dick’s life as we know it begins.
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Being adopted by Bruce Wayne is scary.
He may have visited so many worlds with the circus, but he’s never been part of a singular world that is so large. The manor on its own is so expansive he gets lost regularly. He can’t imagine living here so long he’ll know it off by heart.
Those first few months are a limbo, trying to avenge his parent’s murder, the awkward interactions with Bruce, meeting the Batman, finding out Bruce is the Batman! Holy plot twists!, becoming Robin, bringing his parent’s killer to justice with his new guardian by his side. It feels good, it happens so fast he honest-to-god forgets that he’s hiding anything at all.
When he first comes to live with Bruce, he considers telling the man what he is, but he can’t trust him. Especially not with what he knows about the treatment of mers, particularly by rich men (not like it was any better anywhere else, but he knew what they liked to do to them. He’s heard some of them have eaten mer tails like fish meat at fancy parties). But after the whirlwind few months that ends with the beginning of his legacy as the first ‘sidekick’, he honest-to-god just…stops thinking about it all that much.
Dick is cursed human. He likely will be for the rest of his life, and of the life he remembers, he’s spent more time human than anything else. He’s never swam free, he has no culture or family to fall back on other than that of John and Mary Grayson and Haly’s Circus. For all intents and purposes, he is human, there’s no need to overcomplicate things in this new exciting life of his by burdening Bruce with the knowledge this child he’s so graciously taken in is not what he thought he was
And Dick is fine with that. He barely even thinks about his tail, or reaches up to feel where his gills used to be (a habit he never shakes, one pointed out by everyone who’s ever been close to him. It makes him panic every time), or spends a little too long at the bottom of a pool as if being there long enough will cause the burn in his lungs to stop—
But other than those moments, he genuinely forgets he ever had anything other than two legs, that his skin wasn’t always so neutral, that his birthplace is not the rickety caravan of Haly’s circus. Dick is human, even if he hasn’t always been.
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When Batman finally tells Robin about the other Justice League members, Dick is stuck on the existence of Aquaman for weeks.
He knew there was at least one underwater city, it was an open secret at that point, and he had to have come from somewhere, but hearing there were dozens—whole kingdoms underwater— filled him with awe.
Were his original parents down there somewhere, thinking him dead? Had they given him up, were they forced? Did they fight tooth and nail to save him? Was he gone when they woke up? As the years passed it seemed more and more likely he’d never know. There were so many mers with him at the shop, and clearly the ocean was a vast, populated place. It would be difficult to find them even if he wanted to, and he wasn’t sure he did.
But just the idea of a superhero mer, even if a legged one, is awe-inspiring to him. Bruce takes his interest as a result of his love of mermaid stories, Dick doesn’t correct him. His secret doesn’t feel as big of a deal anymore, now that Bruce has a friend who’s a mer and hasn’t spoken ill of him, but it feels almost too late to reveal himself now, so he leaves it be.
Dick signs all the petitions, and when he’s a little older—twelve—and he’s given access to social media in an official capacity, he makes his stance on the bills to prevent mer-trafficking as clear as possible, throwing his massive allowance behind charities and protestor bails and organising rallies and marketing campaigns. Bruce finds it amusing he’s so dedicated to the freedom of mers just because he loved the stories, he has a patronising smile on his face every time Dick declares Aquaman his favourite superhero, even though his room is full of Superman merchandise. (The Superman stuff is just to spite Bruce, of course. But he is Dick’s second favourite Hero by a very very close margin).
When mer trafficking is declared illegal in the Americas, Dick cries. When it’s declared illegal in Europe, he throws a celebratory Gala at Wayne Manor attended solely by charity organisations and protestors, fully catered and with an open bar. It’s the first and only one he ever asks to host, and it’s the best one he attends.
And yet through all of it, even though he reads so many personal stories of mers being returned to their families, Dick keeps quiet and continues with his life. Because it isn’t as if he’s a proper mer anyway, why would his family want him back if he can’t even remember their language, if he doesn’t even have a tail? All the people who’ve been reunited are exotic pets or aquarium mers, or legged mers who hadn't even known what they were, just that their skin dehydrated easily and they could breathe underwater. Dick is cursed, he can never return.
He hates that the thought comforts him.
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Being on the Titans is an experience. Dick meets Garth and Kaldur, he works with Aquaman more than a few times, and seeing them communicate underwater and bend the ocean to their will is so mystifying, learning about their culture through the scraps they offer every so often in conversation is exhilarating.
Dick considers telling any of them, even all three of them, before he ever seriously considers telling a member of his family. Being on the Titans is the most he’s thought about the fact he’s not human in years, but next to them, he feels inadequate. What is he even meant to say? I was a mer technically until I was six, but I never lived in the ocean or swam properly or engaged in your customs or anything. I just kinda had a tail and did some flips or whatever—” What were they supposed to say to that?
He considers telling Zatanna, or even Constantine at one point. That thought is shut down almost immediately, because what outcome is he hoping for? He doesn’t want anything to change, Dick likes living life as a human, he doesn’t know anything else. He certainly wasn’t a highborn or a legged mer, so there’s every chance that if the curse is dissolved, he’ll never be able to come back on land, and he doesn’t want that.
And what would he gain from telling the Atlanteans? They’d be eager to take him on the tour, show him everything he should have grown up with and just make him more unsure and guilty about his place in the world. No, Dick is perfectly content as things are.
Once a sixteen year-old Dick makes that decision, things become easier. He stops lingering on the idea of visiting Atlantis, stops over-analysing every story of trafficked mers returning home, and stops staring at the Atlanteans with a hunger every time they disappear beneath the waves. Of course he keeps supporting the charities, because he wants those who’ve made a different choice than him to have it fulfilled, but he disengages from the idea he’s anything but what he’s almost always been; Dick Grayson, ward of Bruce Wayne, once Robin, now Nightwing. Former sidekick of Batman, leader of the Titans, hero of Bludhaven. Tails and cages do not belong in this new world he’s carved for himself.
But the past never truly stays buried, especially when his old friend bad luck has something to say about it.
Dick lasts all of twelve years in contentment with himself and his identity before everything goes to shit.