I was thinking of what might be fun to write for dcxdp, I thought I might be able to hash something out as I drove home from work earlier...
Listening to a random Spotify playlist that contained 'two' songs right after each other.. (this will come up later)
People know about pirate!batman right?
'Leatherwing'
My mind went about updating leatherwing to include all the bats and birds. Then it went to how I'd introduce danny.
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Danny, who learnt he was a mermaid when he was 14, after being knocked overboard unconcious, into the port he fell, getting brained by a stray lumber spar, caught in fouled rigging and then dragged over the side by dead weight all on accident by his port-friend sam.
He didn't drown, but it took a while to wake up then realising you were staring at the underside of the ships keel.
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not a good thing to discover when your parents hunt mermaids and other mythical creatures. "Dangerous creatures danno my boy, once you anger a mermaid best ready yourself because they don't forgive easily!"
Even worse when they're constantly travelling by ship with their benefactors: the GIW (the gentlemen in white).
A privately sponsored armada of hunters: whether their prey is pirates, mermaids or any creature they consider a threat, you don't want to be hunted by them!
So danny, doing his best to not be caught but still learn what he's capable of, learning how to use his voice to stun and enchant... finally he gets discovered freeing their captives.
He has to flee and flee he does, escaping them and striking out on his own.
(I assume jazz stays in Port and isn't aware of what's currently happened-away at 'college')
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Sometime in the future though, constantly dodging his parents attempts to track him whenever he comes to a port, Danny happened upon captain leatherwings pirateship.
He follows them as a mermaid, watching them work. Sometimes they attacked a ship and other times they fled, being chased by pirate hunters but never caught! It was fascinating to watch despite the danger of being seen (he's seen).
At night he'd wrap himself around the rudder and hum or quietly sing listening to the ocean, hoping another mermaid would answer his call (he's never met another)
One day as leatherwing's ship, the flying fox. Starts to sail into port, danny hears them say they will put up a request for new crew (some leaving, some died).
Danny slips away ahead of them to shore, stealing some dry clothes (without holes to look presentable) and camps out at the inn by the docks looking for hire.
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It takes some work but Danny gets hired on, excited to be among people again. He's introduced to the crew and does his best to fit in, it becomes apparent some of the long term crew are more then just crew, they act just like family...
Danny gets close to them, curious about their relationships with each other. One night (I'm picking cass for this but it could be anyone) he finds 'orphan-blackblade' sitting on the stern of the ship.
her feet through the railing on the back trying to hum a strange tune that sounds familiar, another of the crew sees Danny watching and laughs, 'orphan doesn't talk, but she sits on the back of the boat every night listening to the 'music of the sea' (you do the math)
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That would continue building a relationship at a pace but now, we come to the part where danny is revealed.
leatherwing and the flying fox is attacked by the GIW who stumbled on them looking for danny with whatever dark magic's they use to track him. This coincides with a storm approaching and as the battle rages Danny gets pinned under water by debris and is forced to start transforming.
He breaks free and seeing the fight going poorly tries to help using his cry to shock the GIW, it works. This is where things get a little angst as the flying fox crew don't recognise danny as a mermaid...
Danny seeing the mainmast of the GIW ship coming down tackles orphan out of the way but in saving her gets attacked by her and everyone else forcing him to take her hostage to save himself and flee, whisking her away into the dark of the stormy sea.
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This is where the songs literally came in:
Fish in a birdcage: 'rule #34'
(Awkward timing, forcing me to decide which was the priority: getting my ace asses mind out of the gutter or keeping my car wheels out of the gutter as I did some specific driving on the freeway to avoid some surprise gridlock traffic ahead!)
So play that song and imagine pirate!cass waking up in a cave of an unknown island being stared down at by an angry, shirtless, very familiar looking mermaid who you'd just stabbed...
My brain while trying to drive:
The second song was: fin- ship in a bottle
What comes to mind (as I was now stuck in gridlock) is an angry danny fighting back as leatherwing tries to find his daughter orphan after she was taken by a mermaid that suddenly attacked them during the fight.
He'd interrogated the GIW who invaded his ship, those who hadn't been able to flee in time as he chased after his daughter, they were hunting the mermaid and assumed he was on-board (a thought backed up by nobody knowing where danny had gone-they found his torn off shirt though...).
He tore the knowledge from them on how they tracked the mermaid, learnt the consequences of using the magic, forced them off the ship because they were now 'deadweight', cast the magic and set sail.
And now that he'd found him he was going to get his daughter back... But as said before, dannys angry and they fight...
- that's all I got at the moment.
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The only other things I have is cass going non verbal in the cave and humming her song which could calm danny down as he recognises it as the song he sung when wrapped around the rudder at nights.
Cass stopping the fight between Danny and Bruce (and her siblings) threatening to beat both their asses
Ellie showing up as a mermaid, trying to find danny, she bumped into jazz and they've been trying to find danny for a while (Danny forgets to check in every now and then)
Description: Not everyone has a spirit guide in the land of the dead; they only appear to those who truly need guidance, and who are willing to listen to that guidance once they understand. And many years ago, there was a time when Héctor met those qualifications.
Notes: This is a fic I’ve had sitting around half-finished for an age and finally decided to start posting it. It’ll be six chapters long. (And yes, NCY is still being worked on!! No worries.)
Chapter 1: Tap
Chapter Summary: In which Héctor awakens out of a daze.
“Hi,” said the little leatherwing bat,
“I’ll tell to you the reason that
The reason that I fly by night
Is because I lost my heart’s delight.”
- Peter Paul and Mary, “Leatherwing Bat”
It was too quiet in the apartment.
Normally when things felt too quiet, Héctor would fill the void with music—humming, tapping, or strumming his guitar if it was close by. But now he felt like doing none of those things. He couldn’t do any of those things.
He lay on his back on the couch and stared at the ceiling, as he had been doing for over a day now, trying to will himself to disappear.
Just like his parents had.
After all, what was the point in anything else? They were gone. He’d lost them, just like he had when he was young. Except this time he didn’t have anyone to pull him out of the numb blankness he’d fallen into—he had no one to comfort him, to tell him it would be all right, to distract him from the agony swallowing him whole. They were gone too, on the other side of an impassable gulf—at least, impassable to him, and… to them.
He might have cried at the thought if he hadn’t already. And he had cried—he’d cried and screamed and howled until the landlord barged into the apartment to find out what was happening. Héctor had probably attacked him in his hysteria, but he couldn’t remember. He couldn’t remember much else about what had happened, other than that the landlord was gone now and he’d screamed himself hoarse.
Would he get kicked out? Possibly, but he couldn’t bring himself to care. He couldn’t do anything.
He was just going to lie here until he disappeared.
Tap.
The noise cut through his numbness. It came from the window, but he didn’t care to look up to see what it was.
Tap.
Again, there it was. The thought crossed his mind that someone might be tapping on the window, but he dismissed it. He was at least eight floors up in this stupidly tall building. Anyway, it didn’t matter.
Tap.
How long had that been going on? Was he only just now noticing?
Tap, tap, tap.
The sound continued, picking up in pace until Héctor’s eye twitched, and he sat up abruptly, wincing at the creaking in his bones. Strangely, there was nothing there—all he could see outside were the mockingly bright colors of the Land of the Dead. What right did this place—this place where people just disappeared without warning—have to look so bright and cheerful and—?!
It wasn’t without warning; you just didn’t want to see the signs, and they didn’t want to tell you.
They should have told him earlier, they should have given him time to prepare, he would have spent more time with them if he’d known—it wasn’t fair, how could they do this to him, it wasn’t fair—
A sharp pain snapped him out of his thoughts, and he realized he’d been clutching at his wrist until the bones were straining under the pressure. Forcibly he let go, grabbing a nearby blanket instead and pulling on it, tugging and yanking until it tore. With a sick twist in his gut he remembered that the blanket was one of the ones his mother had made, and he clutched it, pressing it against his face with a snarl.
For some time he just sat there, holding the blanket close to him and shaking.
Tap, tap, tap, tap, tap tap tap tap tap—
Héctor tossed the blanket aside, grabbed a nearby glass, and threw it. It shattered just below the far window, days-old water dripping down the wall and around the shards of glass. And once again, there was nothing at the window.
I’m losing my mind, he thought, lowering his head into his hands and grasping at his hair. His rib cage heaved.
When he looked back up again, his eyes fell on the pile of broken glass. I can’t leave it there, he realized. Someone will step on it.
He was the only one in the apartment, and he hadn’t planned on leaving the couch anytime soon. But the thought nagged at him, so he eased himself to his feet, stared at the glass for another moment, and left to find the broom.
Bone wasn’t cut as easily as flesh, but he tried to move as carefully as his shaking hands would allow as he collected the shards into a cloth and threw them away. For another long moment he simply stood by the trash bin, feeling like he might heave into it if he still had a stomach. But he couldn’t stand here forever, so he should probably go back to sitting on the couch, or something.
Tap, tap, tap.
Without thinking he rushed to the window to try to catch a glimpse of what was making the noise, to prove (to whom?) that he wasn’t losing his mind. Just as he saw a flash of an unidentifiable shape outside, his foot caught something, and he slipped, crashing to the floor in a noisy clatter and clash of bones. With a pained groan he pulled himself back together, sitting up and rolling his shoulders. His body ached more from disuse than from the fall.
Héctor went to push himself upright, only to find that he was missing two digits on his right hand. Frowning, he tried to summon them back, and heard them clack lightly against something propped against the wall:
His guitar case.
Silently he rose, gripping the handle of the case and pulling it away, allowing his missing fingers to zip back over to his hand. He found himself sitting down on the couch again, guitar case in his lap, and staring down at it.
Did he really want to do this?
Papá got it for me, he thought distantly, and he removed it from the case mechanically, running his phalanges over the polished wood. And he doesn’t like things being wasted.
When his papá ran the panadería, he would strive to make sure nothing was wasted, taking home anything that was soon to go stale, and eating it while it was still edible. Some days Héctor was grateful for the food, prepared by his own papá; other days he felt he would be sick if he had to look at another piece of bread.
Right now, he felt more like the latter as he stared at the strings, imagining himself coaxing music from them. He felt sick at the thought of playing again—it felt wrong, after something like this, to make something that brought joy, in the face of this kind of devastating sorrow.
Another memory arose, this time of Imelda and Ernesto sitting on either side of him, Imelda’s arms around his shaking frame, and Ernesto’s firm hand on his back. At one point Ernesto had stepped away, and he had wanted to cry out for his friend to come back, only to stop upon hearing the familiar sound of heavy wood being lifted, of strings creaking. Imelda had sighed into his shoulder, not in annoyance. Shortly after, Ernesto had begun to play, and soon Imelda’s shaking voice joined his music. The song itself hadn’t mattered as much as the knowledge that his friends were there, their music carrying him away from the pain and cruelties of the world, at least for a little while.
He found himself holding the guitar, his shaking hands picking out the tune his hermano had played years ago. He didn’t have the voice to sing the words, but it was better that way. He closed his eyes, imagining Ernesto playing the music, imagining Imelda’s voice, shaky but soft, against his shoulder.
The Leatherwing of Earth 10 is that universe's Bruce Wayne (only with the name Von Hammer instead of Wayne ) and he is more evil then any of the Batmen from the Dark Multiverse.
