Fan headcannons!!! I love this!

He didn’t know. No one knew. This was a time where relationships like that ended rocky for the couple and child in question at best and at worse in death from people opposed to change. Think of LGBTQA+ rights holding your girlfriends/boyfriends/trans/ non binary sufficient others hand can be horrible to do in public. People stare or mock or make fun of. It was a possible danger to reader for people to know she exists. For twenty something years it was hidden who she was never her personality but biologically yes. Ratchet had a lab he’d made at home and they tested her as they went along. Made sure she was healthy and okay she grew up and they hit some bumps but they made it through and she’s a successful person now. She played off staying under water without breathing so long as being a professional diver. She had no outter resemblances that said she could be a mer so no one ever thought anything of it. Until Pharma and Tarn kidnapped her and she was underwater without gear in the cold dark ocean for days. They found her unharmed but traumatized. She was taken to the facility where Ratchet hugged her close and they went home. She didn’t return for a week to work and when she did she was distant from the mers for awhile. Of course they except half mers and anyone who’s in the LGBTQA+ in their facility and their team if they can work or prove their willing to learn. The reader has helped homeless people off the streets put them on rehab and showed them how to do jobs so they can get paid and get their life together. She’s gone to orphanages and foster care centers and offers them weakly trips around the facility so they can see the mers and different habitats for fish, so they have something to look forward to. She’s a good person with a good reputation that helps people. So when she comes back she’s more terrified than she’s ever been. Finally she gets cornered by some of her friends and she calls a team meeting. The mers are in the walls listening. (The walls of several parts of the building are made of giant tanks. The mers can swim almost anywhere in the facility.) She confirms the rumors and the first there for her is Getaway. He jumps out of the tank transforming as he falls lands on his feet and goes to hug her. The second to hug her is First Aid. The half mer who can’t transform or breath underwater hugs her tightly. The poor med assistant was worried she’d died! So what if she was a half mer? The room breaks out in applause as of someone had just come out and reader cries knowing she’s safe here and she’s okay. And the team will face this together. Getaway doesn’t leave her side for the next few days. He’s proud of his friend but for now? He’s going to stick with them.