Work Text:
The waves gently rocked over the shores and smooth rocks and the winds curled gently through his hair, forming an idyllic picture of seaside charm. A perfect setting for Jason’s death, he mused to himself.
Cold water splashed against his feet. From his privileged position, bound and tied to a rocky pillar jutting from the ocean floor, Jason could see the precise moment his captors disappeared over the horizon.
It had been two hours now, and Jason had been left to die. The worst part was that he knew Bruce was coming, but knowing his captors’ sense of humour, it would be just a few moments too late.
Suddenly, that argument with his foster father, nay, his father, looked all that much more silly.
But was it really? Jason hadn’t killed that man. He didn’t! The guy just fell off from his own cowardice. He was innocent, but the way Bruce just looked at him…
So he ran away. He just needed a moment alone, but that was all it took for the Joker to seize him. Jason’s fairy tale adoption, his happy ending from a life of crime and hunger, all dashed away because of his own stupidity, or maybe because of Bruce’s.
He pulled against his restraints fruitlessly, ceasing only so his wrist would be spared the rope burn. The last he ever saw of Bruce was while they were yelling. Now he didn’t even have a pen and paper and bottle to leave behind any poetic last words. He would die a street rat’s death, alone and cold. Not even Bruce could help him escape his fate.
Perhaps, if he whispered them into the winds, maybe somehow Bruce would hear them.
“B…” He scarcely believed he was really trying it. “I’m sorry…”
His throat tightened. For all the words he would read, all the dramatic stories and delves into the rich inner lives of people, he could not summon those same words outward when he needed them most.
“B… I… I…”
A chitter.
It was instinct that sent his feet drawing higher from the sound in the water, but the ropes held tight. Jason’s head bowed to face the thing, meeting slitted eyes and sclera like bleeding flowers.
The little boy tilted his head, sea water dripping off pearlescent ear fins held between black spines. The kid’s skin was all scales, glistening white or black shining underneath the sun, and two little fangs stuck out from his mouth.
A siren.
“W-what are you doing here?” Jason breathed out, drawing himself as far as the tight binds would permit.
The siren boy tilted his head the other way, eyes studying him with a foreign intelligence. Occasionally, a translucent film would slide over his eyes like a second eyelid.
“Can you even understand me?” Jason asked again, after a long time of being stared down by this fish child.
He knew that sirens were real, as a scientific fact, but seeing one up close was something else entirely. Even this skinny child, a far cry from the might that his parents probably had, held within him an almost enchanting curiosity.
Then the kid licked Jason’s ankle.
Faster than he could react, a warm and slimy sensation prickled his skin, and it took a moment for him to realise what had happened. Jason shouted a colourful swear that Alfred was thankfully (unfortunately) too far away to hear, and the siren kid startled, before resuming his exploration.
“Wait, hold on. Stop! I feel like we got off on the wrong foot- er, fin, ack!”
The siren kid seemingly liked what he tasted, because he soon moved to prodding at Jason’s trousers with his very sharp claws, cooing and clicking as he scratched at the fabric, startlingly close to where the rope was.
“Wait, yes! Yes!” Jason cheered, letting a treacherous sliver of hope inside. “Use your claws! Or teeth or whatever! You see the rope down there! If you could get that off my feet that would be– Hey!”
The little siren boy completely ignored the rope and Jason’s pleading, and instead went to test the strength of his trousers by latching onto them. His calves stung as little claws dug in for purchase, and suddenly Jason found himself being treated like nothing more than a particularly engaging climbing post.
On the one hand, ow. His thigh was still sore from the bruises! On the other hand, he couldn’t really throw the kid off even if he wanted to, and on the other other hand, there was something about the wide-eyed curiosity in the child that reminded him of someone…
“Look, I know you’re really excited, and I can show you as many human things and even nice humans too if you want, but you gotta help me out first. Please…”
The siren kid trilled, eyes instead locked on arms. Before he knew it, the kid was leaping off of his belt and latching onto his arms, clinging onto them. Mercifully, the siren kid had spared Jason the claws, instead gripping him with his fingertips. Small mercies…
And the prodding continued. No matter how many times Jason tried to talk to him or even just get his addition – clicking, whistling and general mimicry of the boy’s sounds didn’t work – the little kid found climbing over Jason’s body a far more interesting activity. He pinched and scratched at Jason’s clothes, as if testing the different textures, and knocked his scaly knuckles on Jason’s bare joints.
“Man, whatever they said about sirens was bullshit,” Jason muttered. “Beautiful singing my ass. You’re basically just a wet cat.”
The siren boy, currently batting his hands through Jason’s hair, chirped absentmindedly, and then returned to carding his fingers along Jason’s scalp. It was surprisingly calming.
“At least I won’t be totally alone…”
The weight on his shoulder lifted, and alarm sent him startling, shaken. “W-wait, where are you going?!”
The siren kid’s head poked out of the water, and he gave a commanding-sounding chirp before he spun vertically and submerged.
The ropes squeezed his struggling limbs tighter and tighter. He cared not for the burn on his skin now. “Come back! Wait! What did I do wrong?!”
What did he do wrong…?
Left by his lonesome once more, Jason hung his head lower than he ever had before, tears flowing freely. Perhaps this was always to be his fate. He, who pushed away all that was good. His mother, suffused with drugs. His first father, turned to crime to support him, then changed by prison to become a shadow of his former self. Then his second father, who mistrusted him, and from whom Jason ran. Now even this tiny, innocent little kid.
He didn’t even want to mention his soulmate. That compass shape pointed far across the sea, only to spin in rapid, confused circles when he tried to sail to the other continent. Jason had deemed himself a lost cause.
The tides rolled around him, slowly rising. With the kid poking and chattering, he hadn’t noticed it, but the water was up to his knees now. He was tied low enough to sap the heat from his body, but high enough not to drown.
But… it was this low vantage point, the lowest he was in his life, that he could see something. A dark shape growing and growing deep beneath the water’s surface. At first he wondered if it was the siren boy, finally coming back. Then it grew larger. Large enough that he was an easy meal, strung up like a cheap rotisserie chicken.
The lethargic sinking through his bones dulled the panic until it was a mildly fascinating realisation. At least his death would be marginally faster, and potentially less agonising in the long run. His breath stilled, Jason awaited his maker.
The vibrant red struck him.
His maker was more beautiful than anything he’d ever seen. She was a siren, just like the little boy earlier, but she was much larger, closer to Jason’s age if he were to guess. Turquoise scales like shards of the sky itself lined her skin, decorated with stripes of red along her sides pointing into her belly. Her hair flowed like rivers of molten, glowing metal, swirling flawlessly in the waters.
“In my people’s tongue, we would say you had the soul of a poet. No one’s described me so eloquently before.”
Heat. Burning, searing heat. The heat of a thousand summers in the tropics, all concentrated into his cheeks. A lobster he must have looked, no more miserable and pathetic than the ones she snacked on. Had he really said all that out loud?
“I- I…”
The siren girl’s eyes scanned him. Oh god she was looking at him. Was she going to kill him? Or kiss him? No, wait, that was just a stereotype. Dammit Jason! Where did all your brain cells go!?
The girl put a finger to her lips. “Sshhh… It’s ok. You’re hurt.”
All he could muster was a weak nod. “How did you know I was here?”
“My little brother found you. He came swimming over, telling me there was a funny looking human standing on one of our most sacred sites.”
Jason averted his eyes, awkwardly tugging the ropes. “Uhm… can I say I wasn’t here willingly?”
The girl laughed the most beautiful laugh Jason had ever heard. “Clearly. My name’s Jazz, and the shark-gremlin you met earlier was Danny. I sent him home with our parents. Can I have yours?”
Don’t stutter. Don’t stutter. Don’t stutter. “J-j-jason. That’s me.” Dammit. “Sorry for intruding on your waters. The Joker kinda left me here to die. Sorry about that.”
The siren girl looked profoundly offended, and briefly the fear of death struck Jason’s heart again. “Why should you be sorry? You’re the one who deserves an apology.”
“F-from the Joker?” was all Jason could muster in response.
The girl clicked, anger crossing her features before she swam to the his side where Jason couldn’t see her. “No. The Joker deserves many terrible punishments for his actions. I’m referring to my little brother forgetting that human skin isn’t as resistant to scratching as siren scales.”
Oh, that made a lot of sense. Jason already knew that the kid hadn’t meant to hurt him, but knowing it was because it was normal for sirens made him feel a lot better. “I guess I have the honour of being the first human he’s even seen?”
“Not even remotely close,” the girl said with an exasperation he heard often in Dick’s voice.
Thinking about Dick hurt.
But it had nothing compared to the relief on his feet. Suddenly his legs sprung free and warmth bloomed through the once-restricted veins. A short second later, the rope around his arms snapped open.
Jason was free.
And flailing in the water. Embarrassingly.
Until he felt warm, scale-covered arms packed with fibrous muscle lift him over the water.
“Careful! Are you ok?” the girl shouted. Somebody please kill Jason. She was right behind him. And considering the thickness of those arms, she could arm-wrestle two of him and come out the winner.
“Y-yeah. Never been better. Thanks for letting me not die I guess. So! You into Austen?”
“Austen? Oh, like the human author Jane Austen? I’ve only heard about her, but she’s an icon in siren literary circles.”
Jason gasped, amazed and simultaneously affronted. “Wait, so she’s well known to you guys but you haven’t even read her?!”
“Hey, books are expensive to translate!”
“This is terrible. I’m reciting Pride and Prejudice from you by memory. Starting now!”
And that was where Bruce found him and Jazz many hours later, his soulmate transfixed by his retelling of the famous novel.
They spent many hours crying, reconciling, holding each other through the thick blankets on his father’s flagship. They were so distracted that neither of them had even noticed his and Jazz’s soulmate compass marks pointing directly into each other’s hearts, not until Dick had pointed it out.