Chapter Text
The dark cavern spun in a slow, nauseating circle the moment Simon tried to shift. A heavy, rhythmic throbbing hammered against the inside of his skull, and when he tried to brace himself against the stone, his muscles simply refused to lock. His vision cleared in agonizing increments, blinking away grey spots until the shadows finally coalesced into shapes.
What the fu–
“Please don’t freak out!” The other mer flailed, pale limbs slicing wildly through the water. “You’re ok now! You’re safe! I promise!”
Simon flinched, the sharp spike in volume drilling straight through his headache. He curled inward, drawing his tail tight against his torso.
“Ah! Sorry, sorry!” the stranger instantly backpaddled, dropping his voice to a frantic, rushed whisper.
While Simon appreciated the sudden drop in volume, his mind couldn't process anything beyond the sheer impossibility of the sight. There, suspended in the dim blue glow, sat the first living, breathing person he had seen in… a very long time.
“Hi. I’m Grace,” the merman said, tapping a flat palm against his own sternum. “Grace. And this is Rocky.” He gestured toward the bubble-bound crab on the ledge. Every syllable was dragged out, his hands moving in giant, looping arcs as if he were trying to communicate with a wild animal.
How stupid does this guy think I am?
“I am from a surface co-lo-ny.” Grace pointed a single finger directly toward the unreachable ceiling of the ocean.
A heavy, deadpan exhaustion settled over Simon. His jaw tightened. If he had to endure another three seconds of this slow-motion baby talk, he was going to snap.
“Simon.”
“We found you in a sunk—” Grace paused, his hands freezing mid-gesture. “What?”
“My name is Simon.”
“HUH?!”
Grace exploded backward in a chaotic tangle of tail and fins, kicking up a cloud of silt. His flailing arm caught the jellyfish lamp, sending it clattering to the ground with him. The weak blue orb rolled slowly across the stone, casting long, sweeping shadows across the cave roof before settling right beside Grace’s wide, staring eyes.
Silence rushed back into the cave, heavy and thick. Neither moved, the space between them suddenly charged as they locked gazes in the dim light. They sat like that in silence, just staring at each other as if the universe was held in each other’s eyes.
A sudden barrage of aggressive clicks shattered the quiet. Rocky was vibrating on his stone perch, his tiny claws snapping in furious, erratic patterns directed straight at Simon.
“No no, Rocky it’s ok! He didn’t do anything! I was just startled is all!” Grace scrambled to his upright position, raising his hands to placate the crab. He turned back to Simon, a soft, incredibly genuine smile breaking across his pale face. “See? I’m just fine.”
Simon’s chest tightened, a sudden, unfamiliar flutter tripping over his heartbeat. Wait… what was that? A prickling heat flooded Simon’s cheeks. Embarrassed and disoriented, his instinct took over, and he reached up to shield his face behind his hands.
Only one hand obeyed.
His left arm came up, fingers splaying across his eyes. His right side felt… light. Intangible. He could feel the phantom command traveling down his nerves, the distinct sensation of fingers twitching to move, but the water remained completely undisturbed.
Slowly, Simon lowered his left hand. He forced his neck to turn, his gaze traveling down his right side.
The limb ended abruptly at the shoulder. In place of his arm was a thick, crude mass of wrapped bandages. Piercing right through the center of a nearby vein was a jagged sea-urchin spine, hooked to a translucent bladder that slowly dripped fluid into his system. Almost like an I.V.
He stared.
The space where his muscle, bone, and claws should be was just empty, shadowed water.
“WHAT THE FUCK?!?!”
The screech tore from Simon’s throat, raw and unhinged. He scrambled backward, desperate to put distance between himself and the stranger. He went to dig his heels into the stone to push off–
Nothing hit the rock.
Instead of the familiar, solid strike of two boots, something heavy, flat, and massive slapped violently against the basalt ledge. The unexpected momentum threw his balance completely off, sending him tumbling right over the edge of the elevated rock. He crashed hard onto the lower floor of the cave, a shockwave of pain rippling through his spine.
Panic, cold and suffocating, seized his chest. He tried to scramble to his feet, to run, to stand, but his hips didn't move right. There were no knees to bend. No ankles to flex.
Simon looked down past his waist.
A massive, powerful length of transparent scales stretched out where his legs were supposed to be. It tapered down into a wide, ripped, and tattered fin that twitched erratically, shifting the silt on the cave floor with every frantic micro-movement of his lower back. Through the shimmering, ghost-pale skin of the tail, the pale white outlines of a long, serpentine spine and sickening dark blood were completely visible in the blue lamp light.
His legs were gone. His arm was gone.
He was a monster. They had turned him into a monster.
Through the cloud of floating silt, he looked up. Grace was already there, hovering just overhead, his hands outstretched and his face twisted in pure, desperate concern. Simon didn't see the kindness anymore. The world narrowed to a sharp, blinding point of absolute horror and betrayal.
“What the fuck did you do to me,” Simon spat, his voice cracking as pure venom masked the sheer terror tearing him apart from the inside out.
“I didn't do anything!” Grace held his hands up, fingers splayed wide to show they were empty, his blue eyes wide with a mixture of terror and profound confusion. He took a cautious half-push through the water, his tail twitching nervously. “Simon, listen to me! You were bleeding out in that metal hull! The arm was already gone! And the tail, you’ve always had the tail!”
Simon’s chest heaved, his single hand clawing blindly at the dark stone beneath him. “Don't lie to me,” he choked out, the words catching in a throat that felt lined with sand.
He wanted to tear into Grace. He wanted to force the stranger to make the world make sense again. But as he tried to brace his weight to lunge, a sickening, cold wave of dizziness washed over his vision. The sharp, metallic taste of iron flooded his mouth again.
The frantic thrashing of his new, heavy tail had done exactly what Ryland feared. A sudden, wet warmth blossomed beneath the tight kelp bandages on his shoulder. The grey paste was cracking under the strain.
A high-pitched, frantic drilling sound erupted from the dark. Rocky darted off his basalt shelf, landing hard on the stone between Ryland and Simon. His bubble membrane trembled with the force of his rapid clicks, a sharp shard of stone held high in his primary claw.
“Rocky, no! Back down!” Ryland yelled, his voice cracking as he lunged forward, not to attack Simon, but to physically throw his arms over the crab's bubble, shielding the larger mer. “He’s ripping his stitches! He’s going to bleed out right here!”
Simon could barely hear them over the roaring in his ears. His vision tunneled, the blue glow of the jellyfish lamp shrinking to a pinprick. The sheer exhaustion of hemorrhagic shock was dragging him under again, robbing his remaining limbs of their strength. His single hand slipped from the stone, his torso slumping heavily into the silt.
Through the graying haze, he saw Grace gently nudging the defensive crab away. The merman didn't look angry. He just looked terrified.
For Simon's sake.
Grace drifted closer, moving with agonizing slowness, his hands extended, completely open. “Simon, please. You have to stay still. If you keep moving, the clot will break completely. Just… look at me. Breathe. Let me help.”
“Don’t you dare touch me!”
The roar ripped from Simon’s ribcage, raw and jagged. “Or I’ll show you more of what these claws can do.” He bared his teeth, his gaze snapping pointedly to the dark, fresh bandages binding Grace’s upper body.
Grace froze mid-motion. The threat seemed to physically buffet him, his hands dropping an inch in the water. But instead of tightening with anger, his features slowly softened, the terror in his blue eyes melting into something heavy and profound.
“Simon.”
The word wasn't a command. It was spoken with a quiet, fierce tenderness that made Simon's chest tighten to the point of aching. A sudden, stinging warmth pricked behind his eyelids, clouding his vision before the ocean current could wash it away.
He hadn't heard his name spoken with that kind of gentleness since his mother’s voice, a lifetime ago, in a world that no longer existed. The sheer weight of it made the entire cavern feel like it was crashing down on his head.
“Why?” Simon whispered, his voice cracking, reduced to a shaky, broken rasp. He looked down at the pale, terrifying length of his own coiled tail. “Why?”
Grace shifted with infinite care, his movements fluid and weightless as he closed the distance between them. He didn't approach like a predator cornering prey; he simply drifted down into the silt until he was positioned right beside the trembling mer.
Slowly, deliberately, Grace reached out. A soft, warm palm settled flat against Simon’s uninjured shoulder.
The contrast was staggering. The midnight zone was freezing, but Grace’s hand radiated a grounding, steady heat. Simon’s muscles shuddered beneath the touch, every survival instinct screaming at him to flinch away, to fight, to tear himself loose.
But he couldn't move. He didn't want to.
Leaning into the quiet warmth of that single hand was the only thing keeping him from shattering entirely.
The heat of Grace’s hand stayed anchored to his shoulder, a solitary beacon against the freezing, weightless dark of the abyss. Simon tried to hold onto it. He tried to keep his eyes focused on the faint, swinging blue light of the jellyfish lamp, to force his tongue to shape another question.
But the sheer exertion of his panic had demanded too much from a body already running on empty.
The brief, fierce spike of adrenaline vanished as quickly as it had come, leaving a vast, hollow exhaustion in its wake. The roaring in his ears dulled to a heavy, distant hum, like the steady thrum of a dead submarine engine. His chest stopped its frantic heaving, the pulls of his gills slowing to weak, shallow flutters that barely disturbed the water.
Gray, velvety shadows crept inward from the edges of his vision, swallowing the stone walls, the scuttling shape of the crab, and finally, the pale outlines of Grace's face.
Simon didn't fight it this time. The cold wasn't clawing at him anymore; it was just heavy.
As his head slumped sideways into the silt, his single hand finally relaxed, fingers uncurling against the basalt. The last thing he felt before the blackness pulled him under completely was the gentle, steady pressure of Grace’s hand shifting to support his head, keeping him pinned safely to the earth.
He was sinking, but for the first time in a long time, he wasn't drowning.