Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Aboard the bridge of the Aronnax, Fontaine looked up at her mother, her brow raised.

“What do you mean, ‘my own special abilities’,” said Fontaine. She leaned back in her seat on the bridge of the Aronnax, her lips stretching into a smirk. “I know I got the heavier half of the brain cells, if that’s what you mean.”

Kaiko shook her head at her oldest’s sarcasm.

Will and Ant had gone topside to collect a few supplies (and samples, and restocking articles, and pieces of used technology Ant could take apart and puzzle back together for his tinkering with Professor Fiction…), but Fontaine had decided to remain on board while her mother ran diagnostics on the moon pool’s wiring harnesses. They’d been a little wonky since their run-in with the electric ray monumental several weeks earlier.

“I mean, you’re forgetting that at one point, you were the youngest… And we’ve always known you were special, too.”

“Mom, it’s okay. I’m not jealous of Ant. I rely on my brain to get me out of trouble; Ant relies on…”

Silence fell between the women.

“Whatever is holding the seat of his pants together most of the time. And failing that, Jeffrey,” sighed Kaiko. She huffed in amusement as she glanced down at her toolbox. “Well,” she reached down. “Just don’t assume you got off easy in the special abilities department. It was the queen who wielded the scepter 6,000 years ago, even when she had a younger brother. The queen who used her head, and who was musically inclined. Like another young woman I know.”

“This young woman is happy to let her little brother handle the heavy lifting with the ancient water magic,” said Fontaine, turning back to her game on the console. “I like to think I can analyse my way out of things. Also, maybe the queen had her reasons for not passing the scepter to her brother? Nereus really isn’t the type of person I think we should leave important responsibilities to,” said Fontaine. 

Kaiko tried to hide her smile, but gave in after a moment, sighing as she lugged the heavy toolbox with her.

“I’m just saying, Ant isn’t the only one who’s shown they have a little something extra in reserve,” said Kaiko over her shoulder as she left for the moon pool deck. The toolbox clanked at her side.

“Sure, Mom!” called Fontaine, already focused on her game again. “Hey Jess, you there?...”

TBC?

Chapter Text

The messenger app on the side of Fontaine’s screen blinked and she glanced behind her, casually stretching her arms, to see if anyone was around. Nope, she was alone. She quickly sent a message to Jess.

Fontaine: Got a call. BRB?
Jess: G2G, TTYL!
Fontaine: L8r!

When the in-game conversation closed, Fontaine accepted the video call.

“Hey stalker,” she said, subduing her smile at the face that popped up on the video call.

“Who’s stalking who? We were here first,” said Finn, grinning at Fontaine. Over his shoulder, Fontaine spotted a gull on a mooring. The weather was beautiful and sunny and the clear sky behind Finn brought out the liveliness in his blue eyes. His skin had a light tan that didn’t quite hide his freckles. “How come you didn’t come topside with your dad and bro? I was looking for you.”

Fontaine ignored the warmth that threatened her face and leaned back, crossing her arms in front of her.

“They’re gone for the day, which means I get the bridge to myself to play games. Do you know how rare it is for me to have time to myself without Ant around? This is precious, precious time, Finn. And I didn’t know you and your family were around. Should I be worried?”

“Nah, we’re not here on, uh, business. Are you busy?”

“Very,” said Fontaine.

“Ah… So, you wouldn’t be interested in some Lemurian history I found out, then?”

Fontaine’s eyes narrowed at Finn’s secretive smile as he looked at her via their video screens.

“What Lemurian history?”

“Oh, just something I overheard some guy talking about the other day on a secure channel. He went by the name Alpheus. Something about another use of the Ephemycron. I thought you might be interested.”

Biting the inside of her cheek, Fontaine checked the clock on her screen. Her father and Ant weren’t due back for another few hours. She could sneak out and make it back with plenty of time to spare… But it had been so long since she had been able to really get into this game...

“You could text me,” said Fontaine, as she really had wanted to relax and play.

“Too risky,” said Finn seriously. “We don’t want this information falling into the wrong hands.”

Leaning forward, Fontaine arched a brow and gave Finn a skeptical look. “It’s already in the wrong hands if you know about it.” But, it was tempting. To know something about Lemuria and the Ephemycron that Ant didn’t yet? She debated in her head as she cocked her head to the side. Finn could be onto something, or he could be bored and pulling her chain. She may not know Finn well, but her instincts warned her there was something he was holding back. “Is this really about Lemuria and the Ephemycron?” she asked.

“Yes. And… about a common interest,” hedged Finn. “So you’re coming? To talk, I mean?”

“Yes.” Fontaine sighed internally, logging out of her game. “Where should we meet?”

 “I’ll send you the GPS coordinates. We can talk there. And maybe get coffee?”

Fontaine’s comm beeped with the incoming message from Finn and she quickly added the details to her GPS program to pull up the name and address of their destination.

“We’ll see,” said Fontaine, mapping the coordinates and memorizing the route. She would need to take one of their ship-to-shore boats to reach land, as they were anchored outside the port due to the size of the Aronnax. “I’ll be there in… about half an hour?”

“Sure, see you there!”

“Wait, what is this going to—”

Fontaine sighed as Finn’s connection cut out.

“—cost me,” she mumbled to herself. Hmph.

With a quick note to her mother that she was going topside for some air, Fontaine left the bridge to collect her bag and coat from her room before setting off for the sub bay. Choosing a small skiff with an outboard, she headed for land to meet Finn. She would be gone a few hours, tops. Plenty of time to be back before dark.

TBC

Chapter Text

As Fontaine opened the door to the small coffee shop on the quay boardwalk, Finn waved to her, his smile widening and eyes lighting up warmly.

“Hey, what’s got you so happy,” asked Fontaine, making her way over to him. The tables were spaced not too far apart that they were cramped, their acacia wood surfaces shining. The Japanese bench stools were cute, and the Caribbean blue bud vases with baby’s breath and daisies were a nice touch. 

“Can’t a guy just be happy to see you,” replied Finn, leaning forward. “Oh, what would you like? My treat.”

“You sure you can afford this place,” teased Fontaine, setting her bag down beside her as she took her seat. She turned to look at the chalkboard with its hand-written menu and prices. “They have bubble tea here!”

Biting the inside of his cheek to hide his smirk, Finn nodded. “They do. Almond milk with coconut jelly, half-sugar, no ice?”

Fontaine paused, arching a brow as she turned back to Finn. She crossed her arms in front of her and just watched him a moment.

“I’ll be right back,” said Finn, rising to his feet.

“If they have any—”

“Raspberry danishes, I’ll ask,” said Finn, one hand raised as he sauntered to the counter.

Trying not to smile, Fontaine sunk back against the chair, crossing her legs and letting the top one bounce as she waited for Finn. She watched the back of his grey hoodie as he flirted with the barista making her drink, casually leaning on the counter and laughing quietly. Shaking her head at the way Finn always managed to charm what he wanted out of people, Fontaine looked out the window. The sun shone, though the clouds had begun to creep in around the horizon. Nothing troubling, but definitely something that hadn’t been in the forecast. She would have to keep an eye out.

“Hope you’re hungry, they had extras,” said Finn, interrupting Fontaine’s thoughts as he set the plate on their table. It was piled with danishes and turnovers. He placed Fontaine’s cup beside her. 

“How are you even able to afford all this?”

“Eh, work’s been going well lately,” shrugged Finn, taking a seat across from Fontaine. “How are you doing?”

“We’re doing well, too. It’s been quiet, so we’ve been helping Mom catalog the reef rehabilitation efforts off…” Fontaine took a quick bite out of the danish and nearly swooned. It was delicious! Damn him. “Boring stuff,” she said, swallowing quickly and waving his question off.

“It’s not boring. I think it’s cool. The rehab going well?” asked Finn, leaning back and sipping his coffee. His shoulders were relaxed under his cozy, worn hoodie—his clothes were always worn, but clean, Fontaine noticed—the cuffs a little frayed over his thin wrists. His hands, though, as they wrapped around his red cup were larger than she remembered. She looked at him again and realized he’d gotten taller since she’d last seen him.

“What?” asked Finn.

“You grew again,” groused Fontaine. 

Surprise lit Finn’s face, before he grinned at Fontaine. “Glad you noticed,” he said.

“Are you eating enough?”

“Are you worried about me?”

“No! I’m just… making sure you don’t get scurvy. Or rickets or something,” blustered Fontaine, grabbing another danish. She wasn’t sure what happened to the first one, it had just plain disappeared. She shoved the second one into her mouth to keep from saying something stupid. She was not worried about him. He wasn’t her responsibility.

“Nah, we cured the rickets early,” said Finn, taking her seriously. “And Dad was much more careful with Maddie, so she never had it. Mom really let into him when she—”

Fontaine stared at Finn in mild horror.

“Oh, you were joking, haha!” said Finn quickly, eyes wide. He rubbed the back of his head, his cheeks warming. “Right, yeah, so was I! Hilarious, right? Have you tried the scones? They’re white chocolate and truffle,” said Finn, sliding the plate closer to Fontaine again.

“How are you—oh wow, you weren’t kidding,” said Fontaine, taking a bite. Mentally shaking herself, she narrowed her eyes at Finn. “Stop distracting me.”

“Who’s distracting?” asked Finn innocently, shrugging his shoulders and reaching for a lemon danish.

There was a wry twist to Fontaine’s lips as she swallowed. “You called me out for a reason. What’s did you mean about the Ephemycron? And how did you hack into Alpheus’s communications?” 

“One, yes. Two, and I’m getting to it, what’s wrong with being social? Three, curiosity and proximity, why not?”

Fontaine pointed her—third?—danish at Finn.

“Start at the beginning,” said Fontaine. “And don’t leave anything out.

So Finn did.

(TBC)

AN: Thank you so much to tumblr user @artistwholikescookies for the amazing fanart!

Chapter Text

Glancing around, Finn shifted his seat a little closer to Fontaine, lowering his voice.

“So Alpheus hasn’t been hunting for the Ephemycron, as far as I can tell, but he has been investigating it while he builds his new sub,” explained Finn. “From what I saw and heard, he isn’t planning any major missions for at least another six months. But he’s been studying up on the history of a lost civilization and its artifacts, mostly its art. He’s saving his notes orally within his AI, Aria.”

“Why is he studying its art? Is he planning on redecorating?”

“It sounded like he found designs on the Ephemycron that he’s been trying to figure out,” said Finn. 

“What designs?”

“Does the Ephemycron have, like, spirals and tentacles on it?”

Fontaine’s brows knit together, her chest tight.

It did.

Finn watched Fontaine’s expression closing off and understood the answer she wouldn’t speak.

“Well, he thinks they aren’t just decorative. He thinks there’s a meaning to them, and that’s why he’s back to investigating the history and art of Lemuria.”

“Lemuria,” murmured Fontaine, crossing her arms and leaning back. Her attention drifted and she stared at her bobbing foot beneath the table.

Alpheus—if any of this was even true, which she still questioned—had plenty of time and money at his disposal to investigate Lemurian history while he waited for his new submarine to be constructed. The Nektons, her family, were disadvantaged there, where time was concerned. They had many responsibilities, and were constantly being asked for help…What could possibly have come up, or been enough of a clue, to get Alpheus to sink his traitorous little teeth into things this time?

“Did he say anything about the designs, or what their symbols meant?” asked Fontaine.

“A little.”

Fontaine stared at Finn, waiting for him to answer.

He just smiled at her.

Fontaine sighed.

“What is it going to cost me this time?” she asked.

“What’s it worth to you?”

Fontaine groaned. “You’re so…”

“Charming? Handsome?”

“Infuriating.”

Finn laughed.

Subtly moving the plate with the last raspberry danish on it closer to Fontaine, Finn shrugged.

“He mentioned a story. Some Lemurian history. He thinks the symbols are important to some big battle that happened.”

Her interest piqued, Fontaine stilled. “What battle?”

“The battle with the kraken.”

The tentacles would fit, thought Fontaine, mentally nodding along.

“So, why did you come to me with this info, instead of taking it to the black market?”

“Can’t a guy just—”

“No.”

Finn paused, glancing away a moment. Letting out a soft sigh under his breath, he turned back to Fontaine.

“I don’t want to risk my family finding or seeing the Ephemycron again, or these symbols,” admitted Finn. “I don’t know if I could fool them twice into thinking I was protecting them from a curse.”

Fontaine chuckled with Finn as they remembered the last time.

“Do you still have the suit?” she asks, curious.

“Yeah. It’s a little small now, though,” said Finn with a grin.

Fontaine nodded, taking a bite of the last raspberry danish.

“You know, your family may just brush it aside if they don’t put the symbols together with the Ephemycron,” mused Fontaine. “How would they even know where to start looking for them, or recognize them?”

“I’ve seen them before,” said Finn.

Fontaine stopped chewing.

“I remember them,” added Finn. “It means something to you and your family, right? But… they probably wouldn’t trust the info if it came from me. I figure you can tell them you found it, and you can go look yourself.”

“Why are you telling me all this?” asked Fontaine. “And why are you so willing to just walk away from it?”

“Well,  I’m not exactly walking away. I do want to know if it pans out.”

“You want me to send you an e-mail?” asked Fontaine, lips quirked up as she fought a grin.

“No, I want to come along.”

Fontaine choked on her danish.

“What?” she coughed.

Taking a long, hard draw on her bubble tea to clear her throat, her eyes red and watery, Fontaine stared at Finn incredulously.

“How?” she demanded. 

“Come on, your ship’s huge. You can stash me somewhere for a few days while we go check it out.”

“Finn, that’s crazy. Just tell me what you know and—”

“No.”

“What?”

“Not saying anything else until you agree.”

“You’re asking permission to be a stowaway.”

“Pirate code.”

“I don’t think pirates ask if they can stow away first, unless they’re Canadian,” scoffed Fontaine, eyeing Finn skeptically.

“I can be sneaky. I’ll blend in. No one will even know I’m there. Pirate, remember? I can be subtle.” Then he began to hum "Barrett's Privateers" under his breath.

“Yeah, about as subtle as Ant when he gets a drop-package,” muttered Fontaine.

“Huh?”

Fontaine sighed heavily.

She was being ridiculous, even considering Finn’s request. 

This whole encounter was ridiculous.

And ludicrous.

Probably dangerous.

“When you called, you said this had something to do with a ‘common interest’,” hedged Fontaine. Would he be distracted by that? To give her time to consider another way of getting the information from him.

“I did, didn’t I?”

Fontaine wished she could reach across the table and shake Finn, sometimes.

“What do you want, Finn?”

“I already said.”

Fontaine swallowed.

Do it for the Ephemycron.

“How long will this take to check, if—and this is a giant, hypothetical if—you come aboard to guide us?”

“Two weeks. Three, tops.”

Could she do it?

Hide Finn for nearly a month, potentially, so they could search out this clue to the Ephemycron’s history?

As Fontaine internally debated, Finn leaned back, folding his hands behind his head, completely at ease. After a minute or so, he brought his hands down again, something flashing between his fingers like a doubloon. He began tumbling the small object between his knuckles, and suddenly there were more.

USB drives, Fontaine realized. Then they disappeared from view, Finn’s sleight of hand concealing them once more.

“How many are there?” asked Fontaine, tempted.

“Alpheus is a chatty guy,” replied Finn.

His grin was positively Cheshire.

“What’s the common interest?” repeated Fontaine, against her better judgement.

Finn leaned in, lowering his voice. Fontaine couldn’t help leaning closer.

His voice barely above a whisper, Finn said, “ Mermaids .”

The man knew how to play dirty.

Fontaine’s mind was made up.

“Do you have everything you need, right now?” asked Fontaine.

“Yes.”

Figuring it was worth one more shot, just to cover her bases, Fontaine asked,

“Won’t your family mind? You’re usually… the only thing keeping them from dying,” she admitted awkwardly. “Won’t they notice you’re gone?”

“Nope!”

“How are you so sure?”

“Because they forgot me here two days ago and haven’t noticed yet.”

Fontaine blinked and sighed again.

She hadn’t noticed at all that Finn was chewing the last bit of danish that had dangled from her fingers. 

He smiled, licking the hint of raspberry from the corner of his mouth.

Outside, the wind had begun to pick up and the clouds had packed in, dark, heavy and tight.

“The storm’s coming,” said Fontaine, getting to her feet.

She looked at Finn.

His ocean-blue eyes were huge and hopeful.

“We need to hurry,” said Fontaine, surrendering.

Finn’s smile was wide as he hopped to his feet and pushed in his chair. He followed Fontaine out of the building and down to the dock where she had moored her ship-to-shore boat.

“Hold on tight, we need to move fast,” said Fontaine, glancing at the amassing clouds.

Finn had barely finished casting off when the engines roared to life and the boat lurched, throwing him against his seat as it sped off, bombing across the water to the distant Arronax.

“Stay low,” called Fontaine.

“Right,” said Finn, huddling down immediately behind her.

Here goes nothing, thought Fontaine.

TBC.

Chapter Text

The oncoming storm had made the water choppy which helped conceal the extra set of footsteps as Fontaine guided Finn aboard the Aronnax.

Where could she hide him?

Fontaine chewed the inside of her cheek as she debated. Her room would be too obvious if anyone suspected anything and Ant already invaded more often than he should… And she didn’t particularly want to share her room with him, either…

“This way,” she whispered, and Finn nodded as he followed her. 

“Whoa, is this your secret hideout?” teased Finn, closing the access panel hatch behind them. “Is that a Hummingbird?”

Fontaine set her 12-string guitar in its case and shoved it under her keyboard. Her hideaway was a little cramped with both of them in there, but with all her cushions and inflatables, it was comfortable enough. She looked around and pulled out some blankets from an old trunk, shaking them out and offering them to Finn. 

“You’re not allowed to touch anything. I’ll know if you do.”

Finn nodded and smiled at Fontaine, lifting his hands. “No stealing, no pillaging, no pirating. Got it.”

“Now, those USBs—”

Her wrist communicator beeped. 

“Fontaine? Where are you? It’s almost supper time,” said her mother.

Finn grinned at her. “Save some for me,” he mouthed at her, tucking his hands in his pockets and leaning against the nearest inflatable palm tree.

“No touching,” mouthed Fontaine at Finn. She lifted her wrist and tapped her communicator. “Coming, Mom!”

The communicator beeped once more and was silent. Fontaine crossed her arms and stared at Finn.

“I’ll know,” she repeated.

“I know,” he grinned.

Shaking her head, Fontaine brushed past Finn—okay, her hideaway was maybe closer quarters than she thought, now that there was another person to share it with—and checked the corridor before leaving, sealing the panel behind her.

Carefully scoping out the corridor where she normally entered her hideaway, Fontaine undid the clips that held the panel securely to the—

“Whatcha doing?” 

Fontaine jumped at Ant’s voice from behind her.

“Checking the wiring. It was buzzy when I passed it earlier. I fixed it,” lied Fontaine. 

“Are those leftovers?” Ant pointed at the sealed, plastic tub she had at her feet.

“Yeah… I’ve been hungry…” She said. “I didn’t want to have to go back to the kitchen later, so I packed up some extras.”

“Huh… that’s a good idea…” remarked Ant, rubbing his chin. He looked up at Jeffrey, who kept swimming in circles in his tube, and pointing his chin at Fontaine. “I guess that’s why Jeffrey wanted me to find you. I’m gonna go check the kitchens to make my own snackbox… See ya!”

“Later,” said Fontaine, pretending to clip the panel back in place, dust off her hands—

… Ant disappeared around the corner; Fontaine listened intently for any more footsteps…

—then she unclipped the panel and squeezed through it with the oversized lunch box, quickly replacing the panel again.

“Phew,” she said, stretching her neck and shoulders. She would have to be more careful. “Hey Finn, I got you…”

Her voice trailed off and she shifted her weight to her other leg.

She should have known he wouldn’t stay put.

Finn had scrounged up a net from somewhere on the Aronnax , fashioned it into a hammock and hung it from the exposed rivets between the arched steel structural beams. In it, he slept with her blankets wrapped around him. His mouth hung open a little, a tiny trail of drool about to stain her favourite teal cushion which he clutched tucked under his head and shoulder. His face was relaxed but the dark smudges under his eyes gave her pause. Had he not slept during the days his family had forgotten him ashore?...

Looking around, Fontaine spotted his knapsack by the keyboard. She desperately wanted to look over those USBs…

His puppy snores behind her reminded her she wasn’t alone in her adventure.

Her shoulders sagging, she set his meal on the desk and backed out of the hideaway as silently as a ghost.

Finn, and his mysteries, would still be there tomorrow.

He was covered in tiny scars and scabs, she’d discovered the next morning, when she arrived with more food. She couldn’t help noticing them when she reached out to shake the hammock.

“Sorry, I must have passed out last night,” said Finn. He rubbed his face, yawned and stretched, his back cracking.

Sitting on one of the trunks, Fontaine passed him a plate of last night’s leftovers, along with eggs and toast, which Finn greedily devoured.

“Fank you,” he mumbled, mouth full.

“No crumbs.”

Finn nodded his head vigorously. Then carefully picked up each and every crumb from his shirt and the floor with the pad of his scarred thumb.

His effort made Fontaine smile.

“I should probably have asked this earlier, but do you have any food allergies?”

Finn looked at the ceiling, chewing.

“Seafood,” he said, after a swallow.

Fontaine laughed, crossing her arms. “You’re a pirate. You live at sea.”

“Yeah… Well, a pirate by necessity.”

She arched a brow.

“What would you rather be?”

“What would you like to be?” he countered, picking up another slice of buttered toast.

Fontaine shrugged. “Maybe a submarine pilot, like my mom. She’s the best in the world.”

“You’d be really good at that,” grinned Finn.

“I can’t think of anything I’d like to do above the surface, not all the time,” said Fontaine. 

“Life is much better, down where it’s wetter, take it from me,” sang Finn off-key.

Fontaine rolled her eyes and shook her head, still looking at the ceiling. “If being a mermaid is off the table, I’ll take the next best thing.”

Fontaine missed when Finn opened his mouth to speak, but closed it again, smiling. 

“Speaking of,” said Fontaine when Finn offered her his plate when he finished. “Talk. Now. What’s going on?”

“Hmmm, well, a long time ago, when I was but a speck in my father’s crazy eye—”

“Give me the USBs, Finn.” Quick as a wink she had spun away from the trunk to grab his bag.

He snatched it from her and held it out of her reach. “Wait-wait-wait, OK!” 

Settling on another cushion, he crossed his legs and plopped the knapsack on his lap. “Here,” he said, offering her a worn, gray, zipped pouch. “Just… Be careful with them. I didn’t bring any extra copies.”

Fontaine smirked. Then her brows crossed as she hefted the pouch, her eyes widening as she unzipped it. “They’re all numbered, and dated… How many are in here?”

“As many as I could fit without my family noticing the entire drawer of USB keys was gone.”

She stared at him, heat burning the back of her neck.

“That’s a lot of work,” she said.

Finn shrugged. “Eh, it was something to do.”

It was more than something to do. He had labeled dozens of USBs, and when she shifted the pouch, a piece of torn notepaper peeked out. She removed and unfolded it only to find a categorized list of the contents of each USB, scrawled in his tight, neat handwriting. A sort of index or table of contents.

“This has to be gigs of data,” she murmured, poring over the list.

“I was going to bring my hard drive, but… Uh....” He scratched the back of his head, his cheeks warming. “It… kind of helps run the Dark Orca.”

Fontaine squatted down and pulled a floor cushion closer to him, and a blanket on the floor in front of them. She settled in beside Finn, their knees almost touching in the cramped space, and then upended the pouch on the blanket.

“Let’s start from the beginning,” she said, smiling at him. He grinned back at her, his cobalt blue eyes lively. They began to parse through the multitude of keys, setting them in order.

“Let’s not load this onto the Aronnax’s main computer,” said Fontaine, half an hour later. She created a new user profile on her tablet and offered it to Finn. “Here. You can copy them onto this and save them. It’ll probably run them a bit faster, and this way we can take the tablet with us if we need to, and leave the USBs here, or somewhere else that’s safe.”

“I like how you think.”

“I like how you stole Nereus’ secrets.”

He laughed and Fontaine smirked at him. Immediately he copied one USB after another.

Fontaine’s communicator beeped.

“Hey, you okay?” asked Kaiko. A distant clanking sounded in the background. “I’ve barely seen you this morning.”

Finn and Fontaine’s eyes met over the tablet.

“Yeah, just needed some me-time,” said Fontaine, not wanting to lie to her mother. It was ‘me-and-Finn’-time, or, rather, ‘me-and-Finn’s-USB-keys-time’, specifically. “Do you need a hand?”

“Yes, this thruster is not taking direction well,” chuckled Kaiko. “Wanna come help me beat it into submission? Good for the anger management in all of us.”

Finn was grinning and nodded at her. Fontaine glanced at him, and the many, many USBs, and nodded back.

“Sure, I’ll be right down.”

“Thanks!”

The communicator beeped out.

“It’s gonna take me a while to load all these,” explained Finn.

“Yeah, I know. I’m just impatient,” huffed Fontaine, standing. “Charging cable’s in the desk dra—”

Her eyes narrowed on Finn, who shamelessly held up the cable.

“This one?”

He smiled at her.

“I already knew you took that,” she said, pointing at him.

“I know,” he grinned.

“Ugh,” muttered Fontaine, climbing through the panel.

“How many did you get through?” asked Fontaine as she rejoined Finn that night. She passed him another sealed container of leftovers.

“Roast beef? That’s awesome! Oh, and mashed potatoes, too? Carrots! Wow, I haven’t seen vegetables since…” Finn’s voice petered off. “How was your afternoon?”

“Good. I’m still covered in grease from the gear shaft I had to yank out of the thruster housing, though,” she said, pulling her stained shirt away from her.

“Do I get to call you a grease monkey?”

“No.”

“Spoilsport.”

But Finn’s tone was light, he wasn’t insulted by her refusal. Fontaine counted the small piles of USB keys to his left. “Looks like you got through about… half?”

“Almost half, yeah. Some have more on them than others; it depended on how much would fit. Do you want to watch the first ones?”

“YES!”

Finn laughed, offering her the tablet. “I’ll listen and eat. You watch.”

She had already loaded the first audio file.

“... managed to salvage a good portion of the port side of the shipwreck… the starboard side is still submerged and the excavation is going slowly…”

Patting around the top of her desk blindly, Fontaine grabbed a notebook and pen and began making notes as Alpheus’s voice recited his findings to ARIA. Finn studied her from the corner of his eye as he chewed slowly.

“... the scrolls, books, and engravings are being scanned and sent to me as they’re retrieved, though it will be some time before the items themselves are safely preserved enough to be removed from the seafloor… The initial findings are very promising; there are more scrolls, statues and earthenware still being treated. The scrolls are unique; they date, at our best estimate, as some of the most recent in Lemurian history, possibly from right after Lemuria itself disappeared!”

Fontaine’s fingers froze.

“If I’m interpreting the initial translation correctly, the most recent scanned scroll says the queen was betrayed by the person closest to her. I asked the salvagers to focus on the scrolls closest to this one, but it’s from the starboard side, so it may take a bit longer before I have the full story… The symbols, though, match the ones I found before. This is definitely one of the Royal Family’s personal transport ships… Damn the Nektons, I wish I still had the Stinger… or the Aronnax… ”

Fontaine’s mouth dried to cotton. If Alpheus had still had the Stinger, the shipwreck would have already been raided. The thought drew her dark brows together. She didn’t like his musing over the Aronnax, either.

Finn tapped her elbow and Fontaine shook herself, pausing the audio.

“I transcribed some of what he said, in another file,” he said, pointing to the folder on her screen. “If it helps.”

Fontaine nodded, opening it quickly and scanning it. It was very detailed, and even better, accurate, from what she had just heard. She looked at Finn and gave him a wry grin.

“You already knew how I planned to go about this.”

“We have known each other for a while, now,” he said, leaning back with a forkful of potato. “I like to think I know you pretty well.”

“This doesn’t mean anything.”

“I’ll have to try harder then.” He grinned at her.

Damn him.

With a small huff, Fontaine turned back to her screen, and Finn turned back to his food—and Fontaine’s reactions.

Two hours later, the lights around them began to dim.

Finn looked at the ceiling. “Power outage?”

“Not on the Aronnax,” chided Fontaine. “They’re timed to go out when it’s close to bedtime. My parents will be doing their bed check soon.” She reluctantly passed him the tablet. “I suppose I’ll have to wait until morning for the rest.”

“There’s plenty more, it’ll take a few days to get through it.” Finn winked at her. “You could always sneak out after dark to come see me for more.”

“I’m not sneaking around my ship in my pyjamas,” she said, stretching and getting to her feet. “...” She glanced down at him, and bit her lip. “You can message me through the communicator, if it’s an emergency, okay? I’d rather get in trouble than find out you got hurt in here somehow. If anyone could manage it, it would be you.”

“I promise I will be extremely safe here.”

“And no foraging the ship for things to do,” she added, narrowing her eyes.

Finn opened his mouth and closed it again. “... Understood…”

Her shoulders sagging, Fontaine shook her head at him. “Just don’t get caught. Please. Even by Jeffrey.”

“Jeffrey is a fine fish and would never sell me out.”

Staring at him wordlessly, Fontaine wondered where the Fish Bro Pact had originated. Ant. Her dad. Now Finn. All Fish Bros. She didn’t get it.

“Goodnight,” she said, turning to the access panel.

“Goodnight, Fontaine. Sweet dreams!”

“Uh huh,” she sighed, climbing out.

Wrinkling her nose the next morning as she listened to the next audio file, Fontaine glanced at Finn. It had been several days now, and her hideaway was definitely starting to smell like… teenage boy. Not bad, by any means. He didn’t smell bad. But… Her nose wriggled. If she could smell him, Ant could smell him, and Ant was a rottweiler who wouldn’t let go of anything that caught his attention. 

The audio file ended and she chose a video file next. 

“Treason, I knew it!” Alpheus shouted in triumph, pumping his fists in the air. He smirked, leaning over the scroll and obscuring the text. Fontaine squinted. “She was betrayed! It doesn’t look like it was any of my ancestors, but I’d sure like to thank the person who turned on her. Thanks to them, this whole shipful of Lemurian culture was saved after the Kraken attack.”

“If your video software’s good, you may be able to improve the video quality to get a better look at what he’s reading. I don’t know Lemurian, but I recognize the writing,” said Finn, leaning over her shoulder.

“Good idea,” agreed Fontaine, then she bit her bottom lip. “I know the Aronnax has really good video software…”

But did she want to risk potentially exposing the rest of her family to this new information yet?

“We’ll see what I can do with the tablet first, when you need to go,” said Finn.

“What do you mean, when I need to—”

Her communicator beeped.

She stared at Finn. His all-knowing-grin was maddening.

“Hey Fontaine?” asked Ant over the comm.

Fontaine groaned. “Yes, Ant?”

“Do you still have that other skateboard? The new one?”

Fontaine saw red.

“Don’t you DARE touch it! You still haven’t returned the wheels from my old one!”

“But I wanted to test an upgrade to the Jorange, and the grip was really good on the—”

Fontaine beeped her communicator off violently.

“I gotta go,” she seethed.

“No problem,” he said, lifting a hand from his macramé. 

She blinked. He’d found more double-braided rope. Rope that had definitely not been stashed in her hideaway before his arrival.

“Where did you get… Nevermind,” she sighed. “I need to go get my board. Be right back.”

“Don’t hurt him too bad. He’s just experimenting.”

“He can experiment with his own stuff,” she growled, snapping the panel shut behind her.

Her backpack full of things she didn’t want Ant touching—or stealing, or borrowing-without-asking, or ‘accidentally destroying in the name of science’—, Fontaine dragged herself back through the access panel an hour later. Did other big sisters have to go to this extent to protect their stuff from their alien little brothers? Create secret hiding spots in a ship’s ballast walls and wiring passages to get a little privacy?

She dropped the heavy pack by the desk and looked around. The walls were still painted colourfully, her tablet lay on the desk, charging, and the guitar was exactly where she’d left it, under the keyboard. Finn’s macramé project lay discarded on the teal cushion he’d commandeered as ‘his’.

But—the hideaway was silent.

“Finn?” she called quietly. “Finn, new rule, no hiding.”

There was no reply. 

… Oh no.

Peeking through the doorway, Finn appraised the next room he’d discovered in this particular hallway. Hmm. This was probably Ant’s room. It looked like it was a cross between a garbage dump and a bomb wreckage site. He couldn’t really blame Fontaine for wanting to keep her personal possessions out of Ant’s hands if this was where they would eventually decay, lost and forgotten.

“Fontaine? Did you change your mind?” Ant called from inside the room.

Shoot! Ant must have heard him!

Finn flattened himself against the wall and tried not to breathe. He inched away down the hall, back towards the hideaway…

A whirring sound at his feet distracted him. He looked down and found Jeffrey’s googly eyes staring up at him from inside a motorized aquarium. His fishy tail started wagging.

Finn held his finger up to his lips and tip-toed away, but Jeffrey followed him, occasionally spinning his Jorange in an excited circle.

Fontaine was going to murder him.

“Jeffrey? What is it? Fontaine? You out there?”

Ant’s footsteps got louder, closer, and Finn’s eyes widened.

Deciding that discretion was the better part of valour, he sprinted back towards the hideaway, Jeffrey hot on his heels.

“Mom! Mom!”

“Ant, what is it?” ‘This time’ went unsaid, but was clearly audible in Kaiko’s tired voice. Her son tripped over himself and ran into her when he found her in the engine room.

“The ghost is back!”

“What ghost?”

“The ghost that haunts the Aronnax!”

Kaiko massaged her temples. 

“Ant, we talked about this…”

“This way!”

Grabbing Finn’s arm, Fontaine hauled him behind her and bodily heaved him into her room, locking her door behind them. She peeked through the peephole in her door and saw the Jorange whizz past without slowing down. After one minute, then two, with no other activity, she finally relaxed.

“I swear, if you get caught by that fishtank-on-rollerskates,” she muttered, leaning back against the door to catch her breath. Beside her, Finn slumped forward, his hands on this thighs as he took deep breaths. Their pulses raced from their escape.

“Heh, got my exercise in for the day,” he joked, wiping his wrist across his forehead to catch his sweat.

She was about to make a crack, maybe about him being supposed to Not Get Caught, or maybe about him Not Needing More Exercise, before she remembered that he probably was bored out of his gourd stuck in her little hideaway. He likely ran all over the Dark Orca (fixing things), or different ships (stealing things) or through different ports (pirating… things?). 

Her head fell back against the door.

For a pirate, he was, in his own way, being careful. He was just restless.

“Do you need to get out? Are you claustrophobic?”

“Eh, I’ll be okay. I’m a natural-born explorer!”

She wondered if she could trick him into macramé-ing a leash for himself, where she could take him for walkies on deck after dark… She shook the mental image from her mind before it took root too deeply.

“It smells nice in here. Is this your room?”

Fontaine blinked. Right.

Oh no, had she put away her laundry?

“Oh. Yeah.” She walked casually away from the door and began kicking loose clothes under her bed, her dresser, her spare hair clips under her ottoman. Meanwhile, Finn nodded, still catching his breath by the door. 

“It’s really airy and light. And big.”

“Yeah. It’s… it’s pretty nice,” she admitted. 

Finn nodded again and stretched, moving away from the door.

“Uh, can I ask a question?”

“Sure.”

“... is there a guest shower I could use? It’s been a few days…”

Fontaine flushed. “My bathroom’s over here. You can, uh, use my stuff.” So you smell like me and less like boy.

Finn smiled widely at her. “Thanks!”

“If you pass me your clothes, I can go wash them quickly, while you’re in there.”

He started lifting his shirt, “That would be—”

“IN THE BATHROOM. BATHROOM.” Fontaine shoved him through the bathroom door, the back of her neck burning.

“Oh right, yeah, hahaha. Here!” He tossed his clothes outside the door, into Fontaine’s arms.

Praying for strength, Fontaine nodded. “I’ll be back when they’re dry. Just hang out in here.”

“No rush!” The shower turned on full force. “Heck yeah, now this is water pressure! Your soap smells really nice!” he called back.

Shaking her head, Fontaine couldn’t help her sigh. She’d open a new one when it was her turn…

Oh.

Oh no.

Oh no, this could not be happening. (But it was.)

Fontaine returned to her room, hands full of fresh, warm, laundered pirate clothes… to find said pirate sitting on her bed, shirtless, a towel snug around his hips, reading her YA romance novels. Her super popular, regency-era, pirate YA romance novels.

Fontaine wanted to disintegrate on the spot. 

“Hey! Thanks, that’s the best shower I’ve ever had,” said Finn, looking up from the novel. He lifted the book with the embarrassingly daring cover. “Could I borrow this? It’s getting exciting.”

“Sure,” said Fontaine, when the grim reaper rudely evaded her summons. “Take the whole series. I’ll get you a bag— don’t lean over, that towel is way too short!”

“What? Not a fan of pirate booty?” teased Finn, wiggling in his towel.

He laughed and ducked into her bathroom again when Fontaine hurled his clothes at him.

“Don’t come out until you’re decent!”

“That could take a while…”

“Why did I agree to this,” muttered Fontaine a moment later, her burning face buried in her hands. In the bathroom, Finn cheerfully whistled a jaunty little sea shanty as he dressed. “Mermaids. It’s always the mermaids…”

Fontaine walked Finn back to the hideaway after lights-out that night. She was unusually exhausted and blamed it on… well, Finn. Being around Finn. What she’d learned that day held her imagination captive, and not in a way she particularly liked.

Happily carrying two heavy totes full of romantic, piratey adventure, Finn hummed to himself as they sauntered through the Aronnax. 

“You’re thinking,” he remarked, as they closed in on the access-panel hall.

Fontaine looked up at him. He looked much more relaxed, alert, and content after eating, sleeping, and bathing… She wondered again what the conditions on the Dark Orca were really like, for him, if three or four days on the Aronnax made him appear so much healthier. The shadows under his eyes had lightened, the sallow hollows of his cheeks had rounded out and regained a rosier hue. He even seemed more peaceful that night.

“I’m wondering who would have betrayed Queen Doreus,” said Fontaine after a moment. 

“Who was closest to her?”

“Her advisors, I suppose… And…”

She looked away. She didn’t like suspecting the next person on her mental list, but it was hard not to. Not when they used to play together on the Morning Tower. Not when their fraternal bond had been memorialized in a hand-carved, marble statue.

“Hmm?”

“Her younger brother, Nereus,” she admitted.

Finn’s thick brows furrowed.

“The old guy? With the circlets in his beard?”

Fontaine nodded. 

“Alpheus mentioned him,” said Finn. 

“We’ll have to see what the rest of the recordings say. It just… There’s something about Nereus that never quite fit right. Not just his age, which would be thousands of years old, if he really is Queen Doreus’ brother. More, like he’s still hiding something. After hearing that recording, I just don’t know…”

Finn nudged her with his elbow.

“There’s still a lot to go through. It may not be him. There are always plenty of people who want to overthrow royalty, after all.” He jiggled one of the totes. “Pleeeenty.”

“I hope you’re right,” said Fontaine as they stopped in front of the access panel. “Looks like we’re here.” 

Finn studied her a moment before his expression softened.

“Hey,” he said gently, carrying the totes of books through into the hideaway. 

Fontaine met his eyes.

He smirked. “Pirate booty.”

A sudden image of Finn, shaking his toweled hips at her in her room earlier that night, flashed in her head and Fontaine’s cheeks flushed crimson. She tried to shove him, but he laughed and ducked away, shielding himself with the panel.

Face burning, Fontaine stomped back to her room.

TBC

Chapter Text

Stretching in his hammock, Finn yawned and glanced around ‘his’ room. If he were the type, he could boast of an ample snack stash, courtesy of Fontaine; his clothes were cleaned on a more regular schedule; and he hadn’t received a chemical, mechanical, or steam burn in over a week, which had to be a new personal record. 

Peace should suit him; unfortunately, he’d grown up on the Dark Orca. The restlessness itching beneath his skin returned as he glanced at the empty plates and used cutlery from his supper meal. It was close to three in the morning, which meant: It was time to get some exercise.

… and do a good deed or two never hurt anyone…

Well, it never hurt them permanently…

Kaiko joined her husband in the pristine galley the next morning and he leaned down, kissing her on the cheek.

“Thank you,” Will murmured in her ear.

“Hm?” Kaiko smiled and raised her brows.

“You know,” he teased.

Blinking, Kaiko chuckled. 

“You big softie,” she giggled, swatting him on the shoulder. 

He passed her a plate piled high with a mountain of eggs, bacon, toast, pickled vegetables and sliced fruit. Her wrist actually twinged in delighted protest at its heft, not that she was complaining. It was a breakfast feast!

“Whoa, what’s with the buffet?” asked Fontaine as she joined her parents. She casually reached for the coffee pot but her mother nudged it out of her reach with a glare. Ah, Mom hadn’t had hers yet. Understood.

“You guys have been leaving your snack plates on the counter after supper,” complained Will. “This time, I woke up to find someone had washed all the leftover dishes, dried them, stacked and put them all away in the right place,” said her father. “Whoever did it, I just want to say… Thank you very much.”

Kaiko and Fontaine glanced up and caught each other’s eyes, Kaiko’s wide with surprise, Fontaine’s with creeping horror.

“Are you okay, honey? You look pale,” remarked Will. He set a plate brimming with enough food for an orca in front of her.

“Yeah, just… appreciative,” admitted Fontaine with a strangled cough. 

“Me, too,” chuckled Will warmly.

“Hey, you’re here early—wow, that’s a lot of food,” remarked Finn, accepting the buffet-sized serving bowl Fontaine shoved at him. “You feeling okay?”

“Why? Do I look sick?”

“Your lips are doing that pinched, bloodless thing they do when you’re mad at me but your eyes aren’t mad,” he said carefully. “A little unsure how to read this one, Fontaine.”

He noticed her lips? Why would he be looking at her—

Pacing in the tiny space, Fontaine pushed him towards the desk and into the chair.

“Are you going out at night? Leaving this room?”

“I plead the—”

“Was it you who washed the dishes?”

Immediately Finn perked up, grinning. “Yeah!”

“How did you get past the cameras?” demanded Fontaine, hands on her hips. 

Finn’s grin widened.

“How?” repeated Fontaine, stamping her foot.

But Finn shook his head, smiling to himself. He picked up the cutlery Fontaine had brought with her and ate his breakfast.

Fontaine’s jaw dropped. The audacity of this…

“How!” 

She slapped the side of his arm and he coughed, wincing.

“Okay, okay,” he sighed. 

Reaching behind the inflatable couch, he pulled out a navy blue hoodie.

—Fontaine’s favourite navy blue hoodie.

“Your cameras are programmed to pick up on intruders… but are set to ignore anything that looks like you or a member of your family,” said Finn calmly. “From there, it’s just a matter of disabling them temporarily by putting them on a teeny loop until I come back and reset them again.”

He shrugged.

She blinked.

The millions and potentially billions of dollars spent on the most high-tech, military-grade, subnautical security setup known to man… was hobbled and rendered useless by a teenage pirate with a hijacked hoodie.

She didn’t know if she should inform her parents when this was over or keep it to herself… for potential future… opportunities… 

“Uh, I made progress this morning… If you want to read my notes?”

With a cautious hand, he offered her the tablet.

Scowling and pensive, Fontaine reached for it. “Anything interesting?”

“Yeah!”

She lifted her head at his excited tone and brilliant eyes.

“Do you have any family legends about a singing mermaid?”

Something tickled the back of Fontaine’s memory; she reached for it but it slipped frustratingly from her clutching grasp.

“I know we do, but…” She said slowly. What was it? Why did it evade her now, when it was important? “It’ll come to me. Lemme think on it. Why? Anything else?”

He nodded, digging into his food again.

“Alpheus thinks the shipment of scrolls and artefacts was bound for some kind of hidden Lemurian library. That’s why he’s so interested in the cargo; he reckons there’re clues there on where the library is.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. There are symbols on the scrolls that he thinks are part of a hidden language. The swirls and tentacles are the clues to translating it. They’re on all the scrolls, beside each other. They show where the entrance to the library may be!”

“But we don’t have the scrolls… the video feed wasn’t great…”

“Uh, about that… I may have… used just a teensy part of the Aronnax’s memory to render a few pieces of the video into better quality.”

“Finn!”

He raised his arms instinctively to ward off Fontaine’s slap.

“Wait-wait-wait! They’ll never figure it out, I promise!”

“Why?”

“... I made it look like it was Ant logging in to watch an alien anime V-logger live stream.”

Fontaine’s shoulders sagged.

If he wasn’t so brilliant, she would have beaten Finn senseless by now.  

They stared at each other a moment before Fontaine gave in first. “How did the video turn out?”

He grinned at her, his eyes bright. “Really good.”

“Why are you so excited? Have you secretly learned Lemurian by studying all this stuff?”

“No,” he said, pulling up the video and pausing it when the symbols were displayed on Alpheus’ screen. He pulled up a map in another browser window on the tablet, then flipped between it and the frozen video. He pointed at a particular sequence of curlicues and tentacles on Alpheus’s page.

“I know where I’ve seen this before,” he declared confidently. “The hidden entrance to that library must be near here.”

But Fontaine’s breath had already caught in her throat.

She recognized that reef.

Later that evening while Fontaine ate her supper with her family, Finn transcribed another of Alpheus’ ego-centric soliloquies from a USB key. The Nekton relation harboured significant conspiracy theorist tendencies, however his propensity to think aloud was very supportive of his and Fontaine’s efforts to usurp him and beat him at his own game. Chewing a granola bar, he wondered if he’d be able to help Fontaine devise a way to use this propensity against Ant to stop him from stealing her things…

“Hmmm… There’s a lot of emotional language in this section, I’m not sure how reliable it is,” remarked Alpheus as he pored over a series of images taken of the sunken scrolls. “Something about great mourning, or a terrible battle… More tentacles, possibly the Kraken? There’s something here about a war song—no, a battle cry—” he leaned in closer, murmuring to himself as he traced a series of Lemurian characters or symbols on the screen. “A battle cry so loud that the sea swallowed the land… A cave-in!”

Finn typed as quickly as he could to catch up with Alpheus’ ramblings.

“There was a battle with the Kraken, and then there was a war-sound-attack that caused a cave-in… it stunned the attacking Kraken,” said Alpheus to himself. 

Pausing the video, Finn stared at his notes. Brows drawn together, he saved the document and then scrolled further up, where he’d saved his previous night’s notes.
He bit the inside of his bottom lip and looked at the panel that led out into the main corridor of the Aronnax.

By his guess, the Nektons would be eating supper together for at least another half an hour.

“Mom!” shrieked Ant, racing to his parents’ room that night.

“Yes, Ant,” sighed Kaiko, rubbing her ear where her eardrum throbbed courtesy of Ant’s latest paranoia. It was followed by a light whirring from the jorange, hot on Ant’s heels.

“The ghost! The ghost is definitely back!”

“What did the ghost do this time?”

“He cleaned my room!”

From beside his not-at-all-homicidal-wife in bed, Will looked up from his notes on Lemurian geopolitical negotiations. “Come again, son?”

“The ghost cleaned my room! I can see my floor! It’s freaking me out!”

Kaiko stared at her son tiredly before turning to her husband and giving him the ‘I’m Exhausted, It’s Your Turn’-look.

“Then you should… leave him some… uh… milk and cookies,” puzzled out Will, glancing confusedly back and forth between his wife and son.

“I should… wait… that’s a great idea!” Ant smacked his fist into his open palm. “That’s it! I should keep the sea ghost happy and appeased! That way he’ll leave my soul alone!” He stood up straighter. “Thanks, Dad—C’mon, Jeffrey!”

The pair raced out of the room with all the haste with which they’d arrived.

In their wake, the silence stretched. 

Then…

“... That went better than expected,” remarked Will, impressed with himself.

Kaiko dropped her head in her hands, swallowing her groan. Now they were literally feeding the ghost myth…

At the soft tap on the door, Fontaine’s brow furrowed, before she leapt to her feet and yanked the door open, already hauling Finn inside.

“What happened?”

She gaped as he held himself at arm’s length from her. He was covered head to foot in dust, grime, smudges of dirt across his arms and cheeks, and utterly filthy. Fontaine couldn’t help recoiling at the sour scent of body odour that wafted to her nose. It was almost as bad as—

She groaned, recognizing the smell.

“You brother’s room,” explained Finn, standing awkwardly. “Can I borrow your shower? And some clothes?”

Holding her nose, Fontaine nodded and pointed in the direction of her bathroom. “Please.”

Finn pretended to lean towards Fontaine for a moment before she shoved him towards the bathroom. “NOW. Please.”

He laughed and closed the door behind him. A moment later, the rush of the shower pelting the walls and Finn moaning with relief reached Fontaine’s ears.

Heat rushed to her cheeks.

“Ugh, boys,” she muttered under her breath.

Leaving Finn to his shower, Fontained headed to the laundry room to see if any of her parents’ clothes were still hanging to dry, as it was unlikely any of her own clothing would fit Finn’s broader shoulders, taller stature and…

For a split second, his larger hands popped into her memory.

Coughing, she cleared her throat and patted her burning cheeks as she closed the door behind her.

Laundry, laundry, clean thoughts—um, I mean—Fresh, clean laundry…

“They’re a bit long, but the belt helps, thanks,” said Finn.

Fontaine glanced away as he tightened the belt another notch. She shrugged, hands in her pockets. 

“Just make sure to keep out of range of the—”

Tapping outside the door froze them in place. Footsteps.

“Hide-hide-hide—” hissed Fontaine, but Finn had already pulled the bathroom door closed behind himself again. 

A knock on her door sounded just as the ‘click’ of the lights extinguished in the bathroom, leaving Finn in darkness.

“Yes?” called Fontaine, her voice too high. She cleared her throat and answered it. “Mom?”

“Hey honey,” yawned Kaiko. She wrapped her bathrobe around herself a little snugger. “I’m just checking to make sure the ‘ghost’ has not come to clean your room, too?”

“Nooooo,” said Fontaine, stringing out the vowels and leaning against her door frame.

“See, Ant?” said their mother, turning to her son who stood a few feet behind her, Jeffrey sleepily following behind. “There’s no ghost mysteriously cleaning the ship. Unfortunately. Now go back and clean the kitchen.”

“But the ghost will clean it for me! I made all the cookies for it!”

Kaiko covered her eyes with her hands and muttered something suspiciously like, “Lord love a duck” under her breath before turning to her son and jabbing her finger down the hall towards the kitchen. “ Now , mister. And don’t think I won’t be walking these halls to make sure you don’t skip out on your chores.”

Behind her mother’s turned back, Fontaine’s smile froze.

“Sorry honey, you can go back to bed,” yawned Kaiko, turning back to Fontaine and smiling gently. “Love you, good night.”

“Love you, too. Night, Mom!”

Closing the door quietly behind her—and locking it—Fontaine leaned against the back of the door and slid down to the ground.

“Everything okay?” asked Finn, poking his head out of her bathroom a moment later. He rubbed a towel over his wet hair.

Flushing again for no good reason, Fontaine groaned into her hands.

Great. Now Finn had to stay in her room overnight.

“I can be really quiet,” he insisted.

“No, just stay here for one night,” sighed Fontaine. She adjusted the extra blankets on the floor and added two more pillows. “Sorry, it won’t be as comfortable as your hammock, but it’s better than nothing.”

“Anything is better than the Orca’s engine room,” said Finn with a wink.

“You don’t seriously—”

“It’s a joke! A joke,” he said, lifting his palms in front of him in a calming gesture. 

A mixture of wired nerves and exhaustion left Fontaine a bit edgy and she took a deep, calming breath and let it out slowly.

“So, what did you learn today?” she asked, changing the subject.

“A little more about mermaids, but nothing concrete.”

“You keep bringing them up but you never say much about them,” remarked Fontaine, taking her pyjamas to the bathroom. She changed quickly and came out again, dumping her clothes in her laundry hamper. 

Under the blankets on her floor, Finn lay on his side, his head propped up on his hand as he grinned at her. He wore one of her dad’s t-shirts and his short hair was now dry and clean. He smelled like her soap and shampoo. Her nose twitched. And her deodorant spray…

Unwilling to turn off her lamp quite yet, Fontaine watched Finn.

He grinned up at her. “We’re both into mermaids. We’re both sailors. It’s a common interest.”

Fontaine’s brow arched as she climbed into her bed and stared him down.

“Really?”

“Yeah. 

“What are some of your favourite mermaid stories?”

“I like the selkie myths,” he admitted. “But I don’t like the part where their husbands often took away their seal skins to trap them on land. I would have made sure they’d always have a way back to their families, if they wanted it.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. Family’s important.”

She nodded. She could agree with that. If one liked one’s family, that is.

“How about you?”

Fontaine settled in on her own side and listened carefully for a moment. The ship was on autopilot and the usual hum of the turbines and engines lulled her sleepily.

“I like how fierce they can be. Sirens. That kind of thing,” she said, yawning into her elbow. “What else?”

“Well, there are also the myths that talk about kissing mermaids,” he said, winking at her. 

She threw a pillow at him.

He laughed, caught it, and tucked it under his head, sliding down onto his side.

“You did that on purpose!”

“Maybe,” he said cheekily.

“Argh!” she exclaimed, but quietly.

He grinned. “Seriously, though. How cool would it be to get the opportunity to breathe underwater, or be healed, just by a mermaid’s kiss? To be unable to drown? To maybe even live underwater?” He shook his head slowly, yawning into his shoulder, his deep voice resonating. “Would you pass it up?”

“I dunno. It’s cool,” she admitted grudgingly, yawning again. “But it’s obviously still a myth.”

Fumbling with her lamp, she extinguished the light.

“Maybe… but I’d be willing to give it a try,” said Finn in the darkness.

… Silence.

Then, just over the gentle hum of the Aronnax’s engines, he made out the soft sound of Fontaine’s tiny kitten snores.

He grinned and closed his eyes.

“Night, Fontaine.”

A light clinking disturbed Fontaine’s dreams at one point. Dreams of mermaids, and armies, and tentacles, and pirates, and—

“Hmgndldl?”

“Shhhh, go back to sleep,” whispered a familiar voice.

Then a heavy layer of blankets was laid atop her and Fontaine slipped back into her dreams.

Knock-knock-knock.

Groaning, Fontaine scrunched her eyes shut and buried herself deeper in her blankets. She’d been having such a good dream.

About fighting a giant squid, and something about a massive, smoky sperm whale, too, whatever that meant, and, some cute guy with blue eyes—

She choked.

“Fontaine? Honey? Is everything okay?”

Gasping horrifically, Fontaine shot up in bed, her knuckles white as she gripped her… piles and piles of blankets… none of which were on the flooromgwheredidheescapetothistime—

“Honey?”

“Sorry, Mom,” she called, stumbling and tripping over herself to answer the door.

She unlocked it and pulled it open.

“Whoa, someone’s got a crazy case of bedhead,” teased Kaiko.

“Hmmm?” mumbled Fontaine, rubbing her eyes.

Her mother giggled.

“It’s almost lunch. What kept you up so late?”

DONOTSAYANYTHING—

“Mmsstalking ‘bout—”

She blinked and stared at her mother.

“Lunch?”

Nodding, Kaiko pointed to her comm-watch. It was quarter to noon.

“Good dreams?”

“Uh… I guess…?”

Shaking her head, Kaiko crossed her arms. “Well, c’mon. I got your message and we’re already on our way. You can fill the rest of us in when you get to the bridge.”

“Message?”

“To check the coral bleaching off Antigua? Your message from last night? When you were raiding your brother’s cookie stash?” reminded Kaiko. 

“I didn’t—”

“I can see the plate on your desk, Fontaine,” said Kaiko, gesturing with her chin. 

Fontaine whipped around, nearly losing her balance.

Sure enough, there sat a plate of cookies wrapped in plastic, in the middle of her desk.

Her mother tutted and Fontaine, trembling a little, slowly turned back to face her, face burning.

“Those are the cookies Ant baked in the middle of the night… So that’s what you were doing…” Kaiko sighed, rubbing her forehead. “Just don’t let him see you return the plate,” she mumbled, a vein throbbing in her temple. 

“I won’t,” said Fontaine weakly, putting together what must have happened. Her grip on the doorframe slipped as her mother walked away. 

Dammit. 

Finn.

“Hey Fontaine! Great news: I figured out how to pacify the ghost-Santa that’s haunting the ship.”

“You did, Ant?”

“Yep! And,” he added, sneaking closer and whispering. “I think I can get him to help me fix a few things I may have accidentally… uh…”

“... broken?” supplied Fontaine drily.

“Improved! In uh, pieces! Maybe more pieces than originally, uh, anticipated, but…”

Out of the corner of her eye, Fontaine caught sight of a shadow slinking away down the corridor from her personal hideout. 

She focused on her annoying little brother.

“Right? Haha! Well, see ya later! Jeffrey and I are installing more cameras to try and catch it in the act! We have UV, infrared, motion-detecting, night-vision, thermal-imaging, plasma-exposing, radio-wave-revealing—oh! And we should double the sensitivity on the Aronnax’s cameras while we’re at it… We gotta protect Jeffrey, in case the ghost Santa accidentally mistakes him for bait…”

—why was the cabling hanging out of the wall panel like that, over there?...

“That’s great, Ant,” said Fontaine, only half listening.

 What was Finn doing out of his room again? It was the middle of the day!

Ant sauntered away, proud of his deduction.

Meanwhile, Fontaine just arched a brow over her shoulder as Finn winked at her from around the corner. Then he smirked, holding up the cables that led to—her eyes traced the path—… one of the Aronnax’s own security cameras.

He smirked.

Suddenly, instead of worrying, Fontaine found herself smirking back.

If anyone could find a way around Ant’s spy cameras—and possibly turn them back around on him—it would be Finn.

TBC

Chapter Text

Deep in Lemuria, Long Ago…

A knock at the door to her music room interrupted the Queen on one of her treasured, few escapes from court.

Setting down her lute, Doreus lifted her chin as the leader of The Guardians, Proteus, approached her.

“Your Majesty,” he greeted her with as slight a bow as he could get away with.
“Proteus. Is there news on the smugglers?”

“Promising leads, but nothing substantial to report,” relayed Proteus, his deep voice apologetic. “Perhaps, with the power of the Ephemycron, The Guardians could more quickly determine their intentions or path…”

Doreus’ hard, mossy eyes held fast to Proteus’.

“Unfortunately, it is indisposed,” she said.

Proteus’ shoulders tightened. His gaze shifted to her sceptre.

“Alas,” he replied after a pause too extended to be polite. 

“Thank you for your service, Guardian Proteus,” said the Queen, gathering his attention again.

He brought his hands together before him and bowed, his long sleeves concealing the subtle trembling of his fists.

“I serve at your pleasure, Your Majesty.”

“I know,” said Doreus, her features impassive.

A muscle ticked in Proteus’ cheek and jaw as he bowed, dismissed.

Thirteen year old Nereus’s gray-blue eyes sparkled as his hero strutted through the door to the palace library, where he’d been studying.

“Fidelus!” he called, scrambling to his feet. “You’re back!”

“Young Prince Nereus! You look well,” grinned Fidelus. He changed course and approached the teenage monarch. “What does Cory-Dory have you working on this time?”

“Shhhhh,” hissed Nereus, though he couldn’t quite conceal his grin at Fidelus’ nickname for his older sister. “You can’t call her that!”

With a gallic shrug, Fidelus winked at Nereus. “Then let’s keep that between us, so she doesn’t ban me from the palace.”

“Again.”

“Again,” agreed Fidelus, clapping Nereus on his growing shoulder. “Did you get another two inches taller?”

“You were away so long, I’m surprised you remember what I look like.”

“Of course I remember! I was there when you were born.”

“You were? I didn’t know that.”

Nereus thought back to his earliest memories and realised that yes, Fidelus had been there at every birthday, every family gathering, every special occasion as far back as he could remember. 

Fidelus, Queen Doreus’ personal attendant, advisor and bodyguard, was probably the closest thing his sister had to a friend. Fidelus was several years older than Doreus, from what Nereus had pieced together, but theirs was a partnership built on respect more than hierarchy. He was pretty sure that Fidelus was one of the only people in the entire kingdom who could tease his sister without repercussion (mostly). She really had banished him a few times for comments he’d made about her hair or outfit, though. 

Fidelus should know by now how to avoid going too far with teasing Doreus, thought Nereus.

Fidelus nodded, smiling warmly. “Your sister and I were playing together when the nursemaids called us to come meet you. Even then, you had big, round cheeks.”

“They’re one of my best features,” touted Nereus, squaring his shoulders.

Fidelus, with his long, wavy dark hair, electric-blue eyes and perpetual stubble, was a tall, broad mariner who smiled genuinely at his leader’s younger sibling. 

“May you keep them always,” said Fidelus. “Are you enjoying your homework?”

The groan slipped from Nereus’ throat before he could catch himself.

“She wants me to work on these translations again. I told her that constellation maps were automatically calculated by The Guardians when we designed our ships, but she said she wants me to learn how to do it myself.” His small shoulders rounded and sank. “It’s like she doesn’t trust them… And when would I ever get to sail on the Great Ships? Only our merchants and military do; the monarchy are always here, at home.”

Patting the young man’s shoulders, Fidelus gave his young master a sympathetic squeeze.

“She means well; she has her reasons, too.”

“I know… I just wish I knew what she was thinking.”

“In time, you will,” assured Fidelus before glancing around. “Speaking of, where’s she hiding?”

“Right behind you.”

Both young men froze as Doreus’ voice calmly introduced herself from behind them.

Fidelus spun on his heel.

“Your Highn—”

“You came to see your prince before your Queen, Fidelus? Do the words, “report directly to me”, sound familiar?”

“My Queen, you look especially radiant today!”

“Clam it, Fidelus. Now follow me to the Tides Boardroom,” she commanded, shaking her head and strutting away.

Nereus winced and waved goodbye to his friend.

For his part, Fidelus gave him a wink and hurried after the Queen.

In Fontaine’s (Concurrently Finn’s) Hideaway

Finn groaned in his throat and passed his notes to Fontaine as she arrived, waking him from his nap the next morning.

“Here’s the last of them,” said Finn around his hand, covering his jaw-cracking yawn.

Fontaine’s hand froze, outstretched, as she accepted the notepad. “The last of them? You finished all the recordings?”

“I thought we should get through them as fast as possible, since we’re almost at Antigua,” said Finn, rubbing his eyes.

“How late did you stay up? Did you get any sleep?”

“What time is it?”

“Almost lunch,” said Fontaine, sliding a plate of food onto the desk for Finn.

“Oh, plenty of sleep. Almost two hours,” assured Finn, his usually electric blue eyes already slipping shut again as he nestled into his hammock. “Lemme know if you have any questions…”

His breathing evened out and deepened as he drifted off to sleep.

A small smile fought its way to Fontaine’s lips as she softly covered him up with one of the spare blankets, leaving him to his nap.

By two in the afternoon, Fontaine shook Finn’s shoulder.

“Hey, we need to plan. Wakey wakey,” she said, mindful not to tip him out of his sling.

“Five more minutes,” mumbled Finn, scootching deeper into the hammock and pulling Fontaine’s favourite pillow closer. He pressed his face into it and breathed deeply, smiling.

Frowning, Fontaine cleared her voice.

“Oh no, we’re sinking!” she cried dramatically.

“Hit the red button,” mumbled Finn, eyes still closed. “Duct tape’s in the left drawer…”

Rolling her eyes, Fontaine shoved Finn and sent the hammock spinning on its axis.

“Dad, there’s a strange boy in my bed—”

“What! Not on my watch—” gasped Finn, flipping out of the hammock and spinning around on his heels, searching furtively around him. He rubbed the hair out of his eyes, spinning around one more time to finally catch her smirk. “Huh?”

“Nothing. Let’s look at some of the Queen’s conversations and records one last time before we get out there.”

Finn stared at her, blue eyes huge, wide and wounded.

“So… There are no strange boys?”

“Not in my bed,” replied Fontaine, folding her arms and staring him down.

Finn blinked, already steady on his feet again.

“Oh. That’s good. So what did you find in Doreus’ records?”

“It definitely sounds like Doreus was fighting insurrection in the court,” said Fontaine, pulling up Finn’s notes.

“Yeah, she didn’t trust that Proteus Guardian guy. She and her advisor, Fidelus, though. I think there’s something there. Do you think Nereus may remember him?”

“Maybe,” said Fontaine, plopping down onto a large bean bag seat. “But if he hasn’t mentioned him before, how could I bring it up with him now?”

“Good point,” said Finn, flipping to another page. “But, I mean, it seems like Fidelus was her only friend. I think we should focus on the situations where he’s mentioned.”

“You didn’t get the impression that he was kind of skeevy?”

“Skeevy?” laughed Finn.

“Maybe he was one of the ones who stole the Ephemycron,” suggested Fontaine. “I was getting the impression he was a pirate, stealing from her when her back was turned. He was often away, wasn’t he?”

Finn lifted a finger and grinned. “A pirate or a privateer?”

Fontaine opened her mouth to reply before she thought over Finn’s distinction. He was a pirate too, after all. He would recognize one of his own.

“What’s your impression,” she asked instead.

Finn walked back and forth across the small, enclosed space of their hidey hole. 

“So, full disclosure, there may have been other recordings before or after these ones that I don’t have, so I’m basing this on what we do have,” he began slowly. “But we only have the records of what Alpheus considered important, which means, only the nobles and the royal court and family, right?”

“Yeah,” said Fontaine, following his back-and-forth treading.

“What about thinking of these people like people, instead of like historical figures? Would Doreus have let anyone remotely dangerous near Nereus, her precious little brother?” reasoned Finn.

“If he annoyed her anything close to what Ant does to me—... OK, OK, you have a point. She could have banned Fidelus from being near Nereus, but instead she let Fidelus have free range of the castle,” agreed Fontaine, rubbing her chin. “But she definitely didn’t trust Proteus.”

Finn nodded.

“So, could Proteus have been the one stealing from the crown jewels,” asked Finn.

Sinking into her bean bag chair and her own thoughts, Fontaine exhaled through her nose.

“It was expected that the nobles back then were also sailors,” she thought aloud. “Alpheus’s thoughts on some of the texts were that the queen kept interesting company. I didn’t get the impression she trusted Proteus enough to leave him unsupervised with any of the relics or treasury, though. It seemed more like she made sure he couldn’t access them.” She shook her head. 

“Could Proteus have taken that as an insult? Big important guy, supposed to be an advisor to the crown, getting shut down by a teenage girl queen?” lead Finn, gesturing in the air. “As a Guardian, he would be one of the ones writing the history, too, right?”

Fontaine blinked, then stared at Finn.

“There are records of Queen Doreus being so fierce she could control the monumentials… but what if she was just a good ruler, and the monumentials listened to her for a bunch of different reasons, not just the fact that she was ‘fierce’? She was a teenage girl,” said Finn. “She was a regular, living person. She hated that one fruit, what was it?”

“Mangosteen,” said Fontaine.

“Right! But Nereus loved it, so she made sure they always had some. She wasn’t the power-hungry monster that Alpheus thinks she was, I don’t think,” said Finn. “And if she was keeping tabs on pirates, I’m guessing it was for a different reason. Maybe they were her friends that the Guardians didn’t approve of? Or maybe they were just other sailors who sailed for different countries or empires… Maybe they just brought her news from outside Lemuria, so she could be on top of the international affairs of the day.” He paused to shrug his shoulders, before rubbing the back of his head. “Of course Proteus would have hated that he wasn’t her sole source of information and support. She was going out of her way to get multiple viewpoints, so she could rule with as informed an opinion as she could get.”

“She was a real person, wasn’t she…” murmured Fontaine to herself as Finn went to sit in the hammock again, swinging gently. “She loved music. She was so good the monumentials used to listen to her, as if they were her pets.”

“That’s what Proteus was afraid of,” said Finn. “He couldn’t touch her, or control her, because she ruled over everything through peace, not force. He had no leverage over her.”

“So why did they have to evacuate?”

“This is a theory, but… I think the Guardians did something to stir up the monumentials and she couldn’t calm them down again,” said Finn. “I think she had to do something that weakened herself in order to protect the kingdom.”

“You sound pretty certain about those theories,” countered Fontaine, looking up at him. 

“How else would the Ephemycron and her staff have survived… without her?” said Finn. “The last records are pretty fragmented, but the thing that keeps coming up is reference to music or song,” he said, pulling up a tablet and a folder full of screen captures, each of which featured ceramics or scrolls adorned with marginalia. “And the worlds caving in.”

One of the urns caught Fontaine’s eye and she stared at it, her heart skipping. It was a pair of seahorses, large seahorses, kitted out for battle.

She’d seen a seahorse statue in royal livery, before, in the public square in Lemuria.

But it was the marginalia now that caught her attention.

“Have you looked into the drawings around the edges of the scrolls,” asked Fontaine, zooming in on one of the illustrations.

“A little, not much,” admitted Finn. “Why?”

“Why do some have swirls, like this,” she pointed to one picture. Then she flipped to another picture, a dozen documents later. “And others have both swirls and tentacles, around each other, like this?”

“Huh… I dunno. Different scribe, maybe? Or the person who was paying the scribe told them how to decorate the scroll?” said Finn, leaning forward in the hammock to get a closer look. “You mentioned the Kraken guards Lemuria’s entrance now, right?”

Fontaine nodded, looking between the two documents.

“Maybe it has something to do with the Kraken?”

“Maybe,” said Fontaine. She flipped through different pages, then, on a hunch, copied the folder of pictures. 

“What are you seeing that I’m not?” asked Finn, pausing his hammock’s swaying by touching the toe of his sneaker to the riveted metal floor.

“I’m not sure, yet,” murmured Fontaine, looking at the copied pictures before re-arranging them. She separated out the pages with tentacles from the ones without tentacles, and then reviewed them again. A slow grin formed on her lips and she lifted Finn’s notes to double-check what each pictured document related to. “Ah-ha…”

“What is it?”

“Look who’s mentioned in the records that have the tentacles. See anyone we know?”

Stepping out of the hammock to take a seat beside Fontaine, Finn leaned over her shoulder and nodded.

“So she was friends with a big time captain, maybe, this ‘Black Whale’ guy—he was the most famous one, and it’s implied he may have also been a pirate. There was a story in here somewhere about him defeating one of the Queen’s enemies just because he wanted to see her smile... He must have had something going on with the Queen,” he said, smirking. “The tentacles are his symbol?”

“Something like that, I think,” agreed Fontaine. “The regular swirly marks are generally symbols of Lemurian royalty. So, was he a pirate or a privateer, knowing this?” asked Fontaine, returning Finn’s question on himself.

“I don’t know,” sighed Finn, rubbing the back of his head again. “They learned to ride the giant seahorses together, according to that other scroll. And he used to enjoy listening to her music. He mentioned something about, ‘the sea is the key is the key to the sea’, way back in the beginning,” he said. “But then, what about Fidelus? Who was he, then?”

“Bodyguard for Nereus, maybe? I’m not sure,” said Fontaine. 

Frustrated, she threw down her hands. “For all I can tell, he could have been a mermaid.”

They were silent a moment before Finn reached to the side and pulled up Fontaine’s guitar. He plucked several strings before finding a chord and strumming a simple, familiar song.

Fontaine’s brow arched and Finn grinned at her.

“Stop that… wait… What’s this one?”

“You don’t know it?” he asked, surprised.

“Should I?”

“It’s the Mermaid Song. Mad Madeline knows everything about mermaids. She picked this up somewhere and I had to figure out how to make music on the Dark Orca for her so she could sing it. She made up her own words, though,” he explained. 

“Ah, so your mermaid fascination stems from your little sister,” said Fontaine. “You aren’t really into them at all, are you?”

“Sure I am. I knew plenty already from our mom, but Maddie couldn’t remember mom’s stories, so I told them to her. We didn’t have internet access on the Dark Orca, and Maddie has never set food in a library in her life, but I have so I used to go looking for more info to share with her. Maddie was rabid about them and I would know because she got rabies one time—”

Fontaine paled. “You live underwater!”

“Yeah, it was crazy, we had to get the Orca to the surface in record time. Anyway, I started a webpage with all kinds of mermaid myths, lore and legends, and it’s pretty popular. I’m a bit of an expert,” he touted proudly.

“Wait, you’re not…” Fontaine snatched up the tablet and made a gurgling noise in her throat as she checked her bookmarks. 

“Hey, I’m at the top of your ‘Fav’ list!” crowed Finn, crowding closer.

“But it says here you’re a part-time editor…”

“Oh yeah, that’s my paying job, it’s non-piratey. I do it in my down time, when the Orca isn’t sinking. I really had to rush a project so I could get it through to my publisher before stowing away with you. Deadlines, ya know?”

Shoulders slumping, Fontaine let the tablet fall to her lap. No wonder his notes were so comprehensive. No wonder he was so organised with his files.

No wonder the music had been so familiar. She had read its rustic composition on Finn’s own website… the best website on the internet for mermaid research. 

… or was it more than that?

She’d thought before, when she first played the song, that it sounded familiar, too.

“I’ve heard this somewhere before,” she said.

“Think it may be in your dad’s Lemurian translation ledger?”

“How do you know about—Finn!”

He lifted it up from behind him. “It was just sitting in his office.”

“We need to return that before we go. He’ll notice it’s missing.”

“Sure.”

Then he went back to strumming her guitar. Fontaine found herself studying his fingers, her arms crossed in front of her.

“Your fingers are wrong for that chord,” said Fontaine after he missed a note trying to stretch too far.

“Huh? I always do it like this.”

“No, it’s supposed to be…” She shook her head.

He lifted the guitar. “Teach me.”

She looked at him for a moment before getting up and moving to sit in his lap. 

“I can’t reach around you,” she said when he froze up. She heard him swallow. “Hold the guitar in front of us,” she said, leaning against his chest. “This hand is supposed to be up here for that chord,” she said, rearranging his fingers. “There, see?”

He leaned forward, over her shoulder, to get a better look and grinned at her when he strummed it. 

“That’s a lot more comfortable!”

“Try that song like that. Reaching for the next chord will be easier.”

He strummed a bit, humming a little song. It was one Fontaine recognized, and she hummed along, too. When he stumbled on a chord, she reached up and played it for him, rearranging his fingers here and there. Occasionally he spread his fingers and moved them around like spiders on the fretboard, making her huff as he chuckled, the reverberations spreading through her from his chest to her back.

After a few minutes, they found themselves singing together in natural harmony.

“You play the Mermaid Song. See if it comes back to you,” said Finn at one point.

“Stop screwing around.”

“I never screw around with you.”

Arching a brow, Fontaine nodded, picking out the notes before strumming the chord.

Fontained looked over her shoulder at Finn and couldn’t help grinning upon seeing his wide smile. 

He caught her eye and held her gaze, his next words trailing off.

Then they simply looked at each other, the guitar slowly lowering to Fontaine’s lap.

The small ballast room seemed much more intimate with just the two of them curled together, the silence now pressing in around them as the guitar’s last chords faded.

Fontaine was the first to pull away.

“Anyway. Now that you can play it properly… you can use it when you get bored,” she said.

A light dimmed in Finn’s eyes as they softened, watching her, he nodded.

“Thanks.”

“Moooooooooooooom!”

“Tag, you’re on duty,” mumbled Kaiko in the dark, fumbling to pat her husband’s face as they slept in their room that night.

Will snorted and pushed her hand away. “Hm? Mph? Wha?”

“I heard it! I heard the ghost! Now he’s making an alien ghost band! There’s music and I checked and Fontaine’s still asleep so it isn’t her and we need to appease the ghost alien overlords!” burst out Ant from the doorway of his parents’ cabin.

Rubbing his face, Will nodded while Kaiko pretended to sleep beside him.

“Uh, what worked last time, again?” said Will, trying to remember in his sleepy stupor.

“Cookies! But there are more of them! They play guitar now!”

“Right,” sighed Will, slumping forward. “Ghost guitar cookie… Do they like ice cream, son?” 

“Ice cream… ice cream…. I don’t know. I’ll check and report back. Thanks, Dad!”

“You’re welcome, Ant. Fill me in in the morning,” yawned Will, sliding back under his covers and already three quarters asleep again.

“If you’re playing music at night, keep your headphones on. It’s disturbing your brother.”

Confused, Fontaine stared at her mother’s early morning text on her comm watch before it clicked.

Unable to help herself, she smiled. 

Finn must have been up late practising. 

“Sorry, I didn’t think it was that loud. Any chance I could get a new diving suit?” responded Fontaine.

“It’ll have to wait until next month when we visit Professor Fiction. Ant asked for a new one, too, and the Professor said he wanted to finish his before working on the next one.”

“OK, thanks!” she sent back.

Fontaine’s brow wrinkled. She’d been hoping to swing a suit for Finn, but it looked like that wouldn’t be possible. They would have to adjust one of her parents’ suits, then.

“I put it back,” said Finn that afternoon. He lifted a bowl of ice cream and took a bite.

“Huh?”

“Your dad’s ledger.”

Fontaine looked up from her notes. “Oh, thanks.”

“I finished my translation app and didn’t need it anymore anyway.”

Fontaine froze.

“Your what?”

Finn grinned at her and lifted the tablet with his free hand, spoon dangling from his mouth. “Ta-da! We take a pic of the page, and the app translates it for us! I figured it would save us some time for the really common stuff.”

Her face flushing, Fontaine blinked.

“That’s…”

“Stunning? Intelligent? Raw talent? Romantic?”

“That’s… brilliant,” she admitted. 

Finn rolled his eyes, his arms dropping. He morosely picked up his ice cream again, pouting. “You only want me for my brains.”

“Not true,” said Fontaine, picking up her notes again and hiding behind them.

Finn looked at her hopefully.

But Fontaine ignored him and he wilted.

Behind her notebook, she grinned.

In Fontaine’s personal cabin, she hummed to herself with her headphones on while Finn showered.

—as such, she didn’t notice him reducing the water pressure to listen to her sing.

He relaxed and hummed along, shampooing his hair with Strawberry Breeze shampoo.

And when he exited the shower—hiding his own grin when Fontaine would freeze up and blush—he was well aware of the fact that she appreciated his back.

“Should I get another tattoo?” he asked, snapping her out of her daze. “Do you like tattoos?”

“Wh-what?” she stumbled, glancing up, he noticed. 

“Let’s get matching tattoos after this!”

“You’re insane,” said Fontaine, crossing her arms and looking away.

But the back of her neck would be pink and Finn would just laugh and turn away, putting on his shirt.

“You okay, you’re kind of red,” he teased. Then he shook his bum at her.

“Stupid pirate booty joke,” muttered Fontaine, dropping her burning face in her hands.

Finn burst out laughing—and nearly dropped his towel, making Fontaine yelp.

They stayed up late that night in Fontaine’s bedroom.

“We still don’t know who betrayed Queen Doreus,” sighed Fontaine, propping up her head on her palm. 

“It was someone very close to the crown if they stole the Ephemycron. We know she guarded it so highly that even the individual Guardians couldn’t just pull it out whenever they wanted,” said Finn. He flipped through their pictures on the tablet, occasionally running one through his translation app to see if anything new popped out at him.

“Nereus said once that he was the first Guardian. But he was guided by the Queen’s advisor because he was so young,” said Fontaine, rolling a ball from one hand to the other as she thought aloud.

“Do you think one of the Guardians was a pirate?”

“Maybe,” said Fontaine. She shook her head. “I feel like it’s something we know but haven’t figured out yet. Did we ever get the name of that one pirate she was close to?”

“No, it was pretty deeply hidden. Probably for both their sakes. It was one thing for there to be rumours the Queen hung out with pirates, but probably another for her to flaunt that kind of relationship in front of people. Pirates are the bad guys, usually,” admitted Finn, rubbing the back of his neck.

Fontaine nodded thoughtfully. Then she yawned and leaned back on the futon she was sharing with Finn.

“Look for me in the floating place,” she recited from memory. “But what floats when the sea rises up and swallows the earth?”

“Maybe we’ll figure it out when we find it.”

Yawning, Fontaine nodded.

As her eyes drifted shut, she thought she saw Finn smiling at her as she fell asleep on his shoulder, but that couldn’t be right.

“By the way,” said Finn a few nights later as they approached Antigua.They worked in Fontaine’s secret room, ‘their’ primary headquarters.

“Hm?” asked Fontaine, glancing up from where she’d been comparing the screen captures they’d printed from Alpheus’ video feed to the Ephemycron. Finn and Alpheus were right; the symbols matched; also, there was a pattern of a black whale hidden in relief in parts of the Ephemycron. Finn said he was still investigating that part.

He still hadn’t given her much news about the mermaid link he’d bragged about, though. Hmph.

“Your snores are adorable.”

Her neck flaring with heat, Fontaine threw a pen at Finn’s grinning face.

“I don’t snore!”

“You do.”

“I don’t.”

“I recorded it.”

“You didn’t—”

“Listen, it’s really quiet,” he said, lifting a hand to his ear as the tablet played a very faint sound.

“You’re NEVER sleeping with me ever ag—”

“Fontaine? Are you in there?”

Knock-knock-knock .

Choking, Finn and Fontaine stared at each other before Finn dove behind the inflatable palm tree and crouched, as still as a corpse.

Did he think that would actually work!?

“Fontaine?” came the voice through the panel.

“Coming Mom!”

Opening the panel and glancing around, Fontaine smiled at her mom.

“The coast is clear,” said Keiko, grinning at her daughter. “I’ll be heading into port when we reach Antigua the day after tomorrow. Can I get you anything? Did you want to come out? It’s been a while since you were topside, you know.”

“Um. Actually, I have a list, but I was working on something… When are you going?”

“I’ll be leaving tomorrow morning, first thing. Because of the reef network, we can’t take the Aronnax as close as usual. We’ll have to sail in.”

“... would you mind doing the shopping for me?” wheedled Fontaine, biting her lip. “I can have a list ready in about ten minutes.”

“Really? You’re giving up shopping to stay aboard? In Antigua?”

“I reallllllly wanted to go check out that bleaching,” insisted Fontaine. 

“Okay. I know you’ve been pretty deep into this one. Let me know if you need a hand with anything. And send me the list sooner rather than later,” said Keiko, tucking a lock of Fontaine’s hair behind her ear. She eyed her daughter carefully. “Maybe step outside for a bit, okay, honey? You’re looking a little peaky.”

“Will do,” said Fontaine. “Promise.”

“Okay. I’ll see you later!”

“Bye Mom! Thank you!”

She carefully sealed the panel and waited a full minute, listening, before turning to Finn.

It took her a second to realize he was still behind the tree.

He really could be silent when he wanted to be, hiding in plain sight…

“Is it safe?” he whispered.

She grinned.
“More than safe. C’mon, we have to get ready.”

“We’re close?”

“We’ll be leaving at daybreak. Let’s pack.”

TBC

Chapter Text

Deep in Lemuria, Long Ago…

“So what’s going on between your sister and her bodyguard?”

Fumbling, Nereus glanced up from his book on lunar-derived tidal calculus and looked around. One of the staff serving girls, a scrawny one whose hair was often a tangled mat of curls and seaweed from her ‘secret’ naps on duty, was peering at him from over a windowsill. Her jewel-coloured eyes glittered with far too much interest for his comfort.

“Are you speaking to me?” he asked, not finding anyone else in his corner of the library.

“Of course I’m talking to you, who else would I be talking to?”

Nereus’ chest swelled and he glowered at her. “You shall address my sister as Her Highness and me as—”

She made a rude noise and waved off his pompous protest.

“Whatever. So, what’s the deal?”

“There is no ‘deal’,” said Nereus shortly, picking up his book again and hiding behind it. “Good day.”

“Ya wanna know what I hear from the other servants?” she wheedled.

Biting the inside of his cheek, Nereus lifted his book up higher. The back of his neck burned.

The girl brayed with laughter, slapping the window sill. “Ya big baby! It’s not bad !”

“You’re disrupting my studies. Go away,” he said firmly.

The girl blew a raspberry and sauntered away back to the gardens.

When he was sure he was alone again, Nereus looked about and set down his book, shoulders sagging. 

He’d told Doreus to be careful, he thought to himself, shaking his head. She may be a teenager, but she was still the Queen. Not that he begrudged her having relationships. She deserved happiness as much as the next person. Probably moreso.

In a further, darker corner of the palace, another voice whispered rumours into Guardian Proteus’ ear. He straightened, stroking his beard. The gesture brought attention to the smug smirk of his lips and the tattle tale quickly took their leave in dread.

In The Aronnax’ Diving Hold…

The sun still hadn’t risen over the horizon when Finn and Fontaine finished their preparations the next morning.

“You’re sure your mom’s gone?” asked Finn, climbing into the Shadow Knight. It was a tight squeeze, but they had decided that the optical camouflage and heightened speed on the SK would be for the best for their initial trip.

“Yeah, she left sooner than she originally planned, something about wanting to be home early this afternoon,” said Fontaine from the Mimic Knight. She felt bad she had only paid half attention to what her mother had said that morning, but she’d been testing Finn’s translator and helping to fine-tune it so they could use it when they got to their destination. “Did you have time to review the controls I sent you?”

“Yep! I’ll be a regular pro at this, just watch me!”

Fontaine nodded, though nerves gnawed at her stomach. She didn’t like lying to her parents about where she was going, especially with how little she and Finn knew about the safety and condition of their destination. So she had guiltily bolted several storage packs of supplies onto the Shadow Knight, just in case. Not enough material to be noticed or missed, but hopefully enough to… tide them over, if they needed it? She prayed they wouldn’t need them.

They were just going to check it out, then come back to report to her parents what they found. They were not, absolutely not , looking for trouble. They weren’t Ant, after all. A quick peek to confirm their intel was correct, and then straight back to the Aronnax. 

No dawdling.

Not even if they found more evidence of the mermaids…

“Are you having second thoughts?” asked Finn gently over the radio.

She shook her head as the Mimic Knight’s controls illuminated around her. “No, just excited,” she said, grinning at him.

“That’s the spirit!”

Their gazes met before Fontaine activated the drop-and-release function that lifted their Knights over the dive pool before releasing them, splashing and then diving down into the Atlantic ocean.

The suits were freshly charged, which Fontaine had been meticulous about preparing and maintaining during their trip to Antigua; and it was a good thing, too, as the clouds on the surface overhead blocked out much of the light.

“Does it seem darker than it should be, to you?” asked Finn as they zipped along, hitching rides on the currents to reduce their reliance on their batteries.

Fontaine glanced up. He had a point. She pulled up her personal comm and summoned the forecast.

“Dammit,” she muttered. “That’s why Mom left early.”

“Storm coming?”

“Yeah.”

They looked at each other. 

“We should be able to make it there within the next hour and a half. How far off is that storm?”

“About three to five hours, depending on how far off shore we are,” said Fontaine. “It’s cutting it close.”

“Are the suits not good enough for storms?”

“It’s not that. It’s that the risk of changing currents or my parents needing to move the Aronnax increases,” said Fontaine. “Normally they would just dive a bit deeper, but with the coral reefs, we have to be very careful.”

“Ah,” said Finn, nodding. “Yeah. They’re…”

Fontaine sighed. “They look like piles of collapsed bones.”

“Like an elephant graveyard,” agreed Finn solemnly. “This is what you meant by the bleaching you mentioned to your mom?”

“Yeah. I just hadn’t realised it was this bad,” admitted Fontaine. The climate change, pollution, disease and other factors had left the once-plentiful, colourful corals in ruins.

Swimming beside her, Finn reached out to pat her shoulder. “Maybe we’ll find something in the Lemurian ruins that could help?”

Fontaine’s eyes widened. She hadn’t thought of that, but it made sense; the Lemurians had lived and worked alongside the sea for thousands of years.

“In the meantime, we’ll be very careful,” promised Finn.

“Yeah,” said Fontaine.

Finn winked at her and she smiled back. “Thanks.”

“Anytime. Let’s see if we can make it to this hidden library just a little faster, though. This current’s getting a little shifty.”

“The cold and warm water are meeting in the wrong spots because of the storm tides,” said Fontaine. “Come on.”

They hurried, mindful of the time and their GPS tracker.

An hour and a bit later, Fontaine called Finn through the radio.

“It should be somewhere nearby,” she said. “The coordinates were right around here.” She activated the Mimic Knight’s sonar and settled on the seafloor, looking around.

“There’s a trench over that way, according to the sea map,” said Finn beside her, pointing to a darker slice across the shadowy plains. Hills and piles of dead elkhorn corals surrounded them like haunted shipwrecks. 

The pair turned on their underwater searchlights, scanning their surroundings.

Déjà vu settled uncomfortably over Fontaine. For a moment, she thought she saw a long, puckered tentacle slithering back down from the underwater cliff’s edge from the corner of her eye. She shook her head and checked her oxygen gauges; all normal. Stop imagining things. “Let’s check it out.”

Sticking close together, they advanced to the edge of the cliff. Increasing the power of her searchlight, Fontaine hovered over the edge and looked down.

“See anything?” asked Finn, glancing around them. 

“Not yet—wait! Yes! There’s something down there, it looks like a ship!”

“Modern or Lemurian?”

“Wood, but too far to tell for sure,” said Fontaine excitedly. She dimmed her light and looked up at Finn, eyes bright. “It’s pretty far down, though.”

“Can the suits make it?”

“... yes,” said Fontaine, glancing over the side of the cliff again. “But we should be careful. We can’t risk a landslide again.”

“I fully support careful sub-nautical exploration and safety guideline compliance.”

“This from the guy who fixes his own sub with duct tape,” chided Fontaine, grinning at Finn as they stepped off the cliff together, moving slowly between the outcroppings.

“Hey, if it’s stupid and it works, it isn’t stupid.”

They reached the shipwreck a few minutes later and hovered over it. It had landed on a ridge and partially buried by rocks and mud.

“Lemurian?” asked Finn, hands on his hips as he swam around the submerged wreck.

“I… I don’t know. Sort of? But it’s not like the other Royal Lemurian ships we’ve seen,” admitted Fontaine, unable to keep the disappointment from her voice.

“Hey, there’s a symbol over here,” called Finn. “I remember it. Let me pull up the translator.”

Fontaine nodded, looking up. No light penetrated the trench that far down, and there were no stars above them to light their way home, either.
Thank goodness for our GPS, thought Fontaine, fighting off a shiver. She enjoyed exploring as much as the next girl, but something about this particular ship seemed… off.

A subtle, shadowy coiling movement from the corner of her eye sent Fontaine’s heart racing.

“Finn,” she said, catching up to him. “Let’s head back. We can come back tomorrow with the Aronnax.”

“Sure, but I wanted to check this symbol—look, it’s the one used for the Guardians! This was a Guardian ship,” said Finn triumphantly. “That’s weird. Why is it a Guardian ship instead of a proper Lemurian one?”

“Maybe they went looking for the library, too?” suggested Fontaine, eyes darting around them. “Come on,” she said, tugging his arm.

“Whoa, hey, there’s something over there in the rocks, it looks like… wait, why would there be harpoons here? I thought the Guardians were scholars? And…” His voice trailed off. “Is that… is that a trebuchet? And over there, an engine of war, or some kind of mortar? Why would the Guardians have had siege weapons on their ships…”

“I don’t know,” said Fontaine, reaching for him. “But I think this proves this isn’t the ship we’re looking for.”

He let her pull him away and began following her upwards, towards the cliffs.

“Why would the Guardians have taken a warship?” asked Finn.

“We’ll figure it out when we get back to the Aronnax,” said Fontaine tightly. Her eyes darted around and she swallowed as several more shadows danced around them, between rocks and outcroppings and ledges they narrowly missed.

“Fontaine, what’s wrong?”

“We need to get out of this trench,” said Fontaine. “Are you safe enough to move faster?”

“Once we move out into open water, yeah. These cliffs are pretty narrow here, though.”

“OK. We’re almost to the top of the cliff again,” she said, as hints of light began to penetrate through the surface above them. It wasn’t much, but it was something to confirm they were headed in the right direction. “We just need to clear this ridge and—”

Suddenly a large shadow passed overhead, blocking out the faint light from above.

“What the—” began Finn, only to cry out a moment later, grabbing his arm. His Shadow Knight spun wildly as he lost control.

“Finn!”

“Watch out!” yelled Finn, struggling to right his Knight. He grit his teeth and manoeuvred in front of Fontaine, pinning her to the cliffside. “Turn off your lights,” he hissed.

They both did. 

Then, they heard it. The low rumbling of an engine turbine, massive propellers slicing through the water.

“That’s not the Aronnax,” whispered Fontaine, in case the ship overhead had sonar.

“It’s not the Dark Orca, either,” growled Finn, still holding his arm close.

“I’m going to tether us together,” said Fontaine softly.

In the darkness, she thought she saw him nod, but it was hard to tell.

Something pelted the Mimic Knight’s shoulder. Fontaine looked to the side. Something else plunked against the other side of her armour. Then, the tapping increased.

“I think the vibrations are causing the cliffs to shake a bit,” said Fontaine calmly.

“Landslide?” asked Finn.

“Could be coming, yeah.”

They breathed quietly for a minute. The rocks got bigger, heavier.

“Yeah,” agreed Finn.

“Finn,” said Fontaine. “I want you to turn on your camouflage.”

“Fontaine—” He paused. “There’s something behind me, isn’t there?”

“I think it’s been following us,” breathed Fontaine as another rush of water, too localised to be a current, brushed over her arms. “Please, Finn.”

He did as she asked and also activated the SOS beacon that would summon the Aronnax.

“Done.”

“Good.” She wrapped her arms around his Knight, and he pulled her close, too. “Now hold on tii -iiiiiiiiiight!”

A split second later, something ripped them off the crumbling cliff wall and dragged them down to the deepest depths of the trench.

Lightheaded, Fontaine strained to figure out up from down as she spun through the rough, choppy water. The good news was, she had surfaced. The bad news was, she had no idea where. Had she passed out? What had happened?

“Finn?” she called over the radio. “Finn, can you hear me?”

“Fontaine?” 

Relief like she’d never known flooded her. “Yes!”

She began patting around her, grabbing hold of the tether line and yanking. The waves capsized over her head over and over, and she disappeared below the water to look for Finn.

“Can you turn off your camouflage? Maybe turn on your lights?” she asked, following the tether line. 

“Uh, lemme… lemme try… that…”

His voice was slurred. Fontaine yanked harder, pulling herself along the tether like a zipliner in her search for Finn. Soon his lights flickered on, however, and she was able to find him more easily. 

His Shadow Knight was tangled and caught in an abandoned fishing net. His arm hung at an awkward angle and bled lazily into the water, attracting the attention of nearby sharks who circled but stayed away as Fontaine approached. The glove on that hand had been half-shredded by the dead coral around them. 

Fontaine checked her map and bit her lip. There were no islands nearby.

“Hey, I found you,” said Fontaine as she swam in front of him. The stormy currents tossed her this way and that, and she grabbed hold of his Knight to steady herself.

It took longer than she liked for Finn to lift his head up, focus on her, and smile goofily. 

“Never thought I’d go surfing underwater with a horse,” he chuckled.

Oh boy, he must have really hit his head.

Glancing upward, Fontaine wondered if they should surface and summon the Aronnax… before she realised that they should have heard from the Aronnax already.

“Hello?” she called over her family’s private line.

“Hey,” said Finn, grinning at her lop-sidedly from inside the Shadow Knight.

“Not you,” said Fontaine. “Hello? Mom? Dad?”

Static. She tried again.

“Fontaine to Aronnax, do you read me?”

Nothing.

Something must have gotten damaged during their tumble through the trench, or the storm was possibly messing with their long-distance communications. Her stomach coiled with anxiety.

Neither was good news. She gathered up the tether line and now doubly-secured herself to Finn. At a quick glance, most of their emergency supplies had survived and were still attached to his Knight. OK. That was good.

“Hey Finn, do you still have your sonar up and running?”

“Ummmmmmmm…. Yeah! Wow, this is good sonar! I should steal this for the Dark Orca. I mean, borrow. I’ll pay you back. Your fav are the raspberry danishes, right? We should get danishes again. Want to go back to that beach café? Maybe we could call it a date?”

“Finn,” said Fontaine, to focus his wandering attention. “Can you tell me if you can see any islands nearby? Or other ships, maybe?”

“The Dark Orca is my ship.”

“Yes,” sighed Fontaine, fighting down her frustration and panic. Head injury was one thing. Blood loss was one thing. Together, they were a terrible combination in cold, stormy water. “But we need to rest until one of our ships comes to help us. Rest on land . Can you find any land or ships nearby?”

“Nope. Just some caves the horse showed me.”

Fontaine stared at him.

“Caves?”

“Yep. The horse said they were magical caves. With air.”

“Where?”

“Mmmmmmm ‘bout a hundred meters down? There’re gates to the cave. Fancy ones.”

Fontaine’s palms hit the front of the Mimic Knight’s glass panes. Right. She couldn’t rub her face right now.

She checked her oxygen gauge again. She was still in fine shape; she glanced at Finn’s and her jaw clenched. He had significantly less oxygen. Was there a parasitic leak in his equipment somewhere? She didn’t see any bubbles rising from his suit. He was still good for a few hours, but how long?

“OK. We’re going to dive down to check these caves,” said Fontaine. “If we find air, we’ll… figure something out.”

“Sounds good!”

No, it sounded terrible, but Fontaine needed to check the Shadow Knight to stop Finn’s oxygen leak and also bandage up his arm, and if there was a chance they could do it in a calm sea cave with air rather than on the stormy surface of the ocean, she would take it.

“Let’s go.”

“The coral here look nicer,” said Finn.

“Hm? Oh. Yeah. Yeah, they do,” said Fontaine distractedly as they descended. She checked their depth as she scanned their surroundings. She didn’t like that they’d been spirited away by some unknown ‘horse’ creature Finn kept babbling on about. Not that she remembered seeing a horse. Or what had grabbed them. She wasn’t about to be taken off-guard again, though, not when he needed help.

25 meters… 30 meters… 35 meters…

“Yeah, none of these ones are bleached, let alone dead,” said Finn conversationally. “I wonder why.”

“Huh? Maybe this is a protected marine sanctuary,” mused Fontaine aloud. She tried to pay more attention to the reefs in case they needed to make another quick getaway. The deeper they dove, however, the more lush the aquatic foliage and fauna.

Her eyes narrowed. Actually, Finn had a point. 

The corals in this section of the ocean were positively thriving. It wasn’t all the same type of coral, either. Brain coral, staghorn coral, sponges, not to mention shoals and bountiful schools of fish flickered like sentient rainbows around them.

50 meters… 55 meters… 60 meters…

The ghost town of their original destination contrasted sharply with this new coral reef location. How was there such a difference in livelihood in such close proximity?

“I wonder if we’ll meet my horse friend again.”

“Could you describe your… horse?” asked Fontaine.

85 meters… 90 meters… 95 meters…

But Fontaine’s eyes were already widening.

They reached the twenty-foot bioluminescent reef that encircled the Lemurian gate like sinewy vines, the round, stone door guarded on either side by a pair of full-sized, very much alive , strapping hippocampi sentry.

“Hey buddy,” said Finn, lifting his good hand to wave at the winged sea-horse on the left.

The calm beast snorted at Finn in… derision? Welcome? Fontaine wasn’t sure. To be perfectly honest, she wasn’t sure about a great many things, at that very moment. For example, the possibility that she, too, may have suffered a head injury during their cliff-side gauntlet.

A crest hung around each hippocampi’s neck, embossed with the swirling runes of the  Lemurian royal family. The hippocampus on the left unfurled its tail before coiling it again, and Fontaine remembered the familiar movement from their time at the Guardian shipwreck.

It gave her pause. 

Had these creatures been there at the trench, waiting for them? Why?

Finn turned to Fontaine and pointed, lifting his chin. “See, I told you I had a horse friend.”

“I’m sorry for ever doubting you,” said Fontaine numbly.

Mindful of their overseers, Fontaine brushed away some of the algae that had accumulated in the stone door’s engravings.

“There, try that.”

Lifting his wrist, Finn scanned the door again. “Got it that time! OK, it says, ‘Welcome to the safe harbour where the unsinkable ship of hope will forever float’.”

“I’ll see you in the floating place…”

The voice in Fontaine’s head whispered in her ear like a ghost. For a moment, she thought she saw the gates as they would have stood, brand new, open, shining as polished marble in the sunlight while a sandy path led inside, before someone, a man, called to her, inviting her to see—

She swallowed and blinked. The strange vision disappeared. To her right, one of the gleaming white hippocampus stared down at her patiently.

“Anything else?” she asked, clearing her throat.

“Uh… Could you clean that part on the right a bit more? Yeah, there. Thanks.” Finn snapped another picture. He opened his mouth and shut it again.

“What?”

“Maybe I need to tweak the translation program.”

“Why? Does it not make sense? I can try and get more off.”

“No,” he said, his voice twisting oddly. “It’s not that.”

“Finn, come on, what is it?” snapped Fontaine.

Every minute he was underwater was a minute less he had on land…

“It said, ‘These gates shall open at the touch of mermaid or man, as long as their heart is as timeless as sand.’.”

Fontaine sighed and again her hands bumped against the front visor of her Mimic Knight. Right. Still not face-palming.

“What does that mean? That anyone can open the door?” she asked, tiredly. How long had they been gone for? They left before the sun was fully up… It had been hours. Was it after lunch by now? It had to be. 

“I think… I reserve the right to be—”

“Finn!”

“I think it means that whoever opens the door has to be in love.”

“Well it didn’t open when I touched it,” she muttered, crossing her arms.

“Let’s take our gloves off and try.”

Remembering the algae that had caused the petrification of her family in the last Lemurian city she’d visited, Fontaine balked. “No way.”

“Fine, I’ll do it.”

“No!”

She grabbed his good arm and stopped him.

“Fontaine. You wiped it clean. It’ll be fine.”

She shook her head.

Finn’s expression softened. “Hey. It’ll be OK. And more importantly… what choice do we have?”

“I can’t help you if anything else goes wrong,” said Fontaine seriously. She hated admitting it to him. It felt like she’d failed somehow. Worse, it felt like it was her fault he was so hurt. 

They stared into each other’s eyes for a long, quiet moment.

“We made it this far,” said Finn. His good hand gently removed the tatters of his other glove and he reached for the door. “Together?”

Frowning but taking a deep breath, Fontaine nodded. She removed one of her gloves, clutching it tightly in her other hand.

As one, they reached for the door.

The bio-luminescence glowed brighter and brighter until they touched the stone and it blinded them.

With an echoing groan that rippled through the water, the stone door swung wide—

—and the ensuing vacuum sucked them both inside like a riptide.

The door slammed shut behind them.

TBC