Work Text:
Sunshine
The memory comes out of nowhere, surfacing from the far stretches of her consciousness.
An Atlantean, washing ashore on the beach, waves washing over her body. An Atlantean, seeing the sky clearly for the first time. An Atlantean, witnessing the sun, so bright and so high in the sky. It warms her skin, her flesh, her sinew.
With bared fangs, she looks up at the sun.
It’s the middle of the night and Gura is unable to fall asleep.
She stares at her ceiling, lying motionless among sheets. The thing she calls a bed is uncomfortable. Her mind is racing. Her body is aching and tired. Even then, every cell in her body is as awake as ever. She reaches out for her phone. Dials a number. Stops. Shakes her head and tosses the phone aside. She resumes staring at the ceiling.
Her heart aches with a feeling both familiar and distant. It’s the same way she feels when she sings sad love songs. A dull throbbing in her rib cage that makes her lungs burn and her eyes sting. Longing, she thinks. Yes, longing. She balls the fabric of her shirt around her heart. Focuses a little harder on this feeling. Longing for what?
Gura blinks a few times. Picks up the phone again. Her finger hovers over the “call” button. She hesitates. Groans. Tosses the phone again once more.
Maybe she just needs to hear her voice. Just a little. She’d read about this on the internet once, something someone called Sad Girl Hours. Maybe Gura could have her explain the concept? Maybe she could call and just say good night or maybe ask something stupid to keep the conversation going until the sun rises. That sounds nice, maybe. Who needs sleep, anyway?
It’s the third time that she just decides “okay, fuck it,” and presses the button before her doubts get to her.
The phone rings a few times. Gura contemplates whether or not she should just chuck the thing out of the window and claim it was a butt dial. No. Gura steels her resolve. She was going to call in the middle of the night and stick to it. The other line finally clicks. The other voice comes through rough, groggy.
“Hello?” goes Amelia Watson.
“Hey Watson,” says Gura, cradling the phone close to her face. The device feels warm against her cheek, the soft glow of the screen illuminating her silhouette against the dark of her bedroom. “Are you awake?”
Amelia groans. “Well, I am now. Is anything up?”
“I’ve just been thinking…” goes Gura. “I think this is, as what the internet would call it, ‘Sad Girl Hours.’”
“Uh… huh,” goes Amelia, on the other end. The detective’s voice is soothing. Part of Gura already feels relaxed. At peace. Free of the hours of the sad girl. She turns to her side on the bed, cradling her phone as if trying to press it harder against her ear. To hear more of Ame.
The sound of fabric scratching against cardboard echoes loudly throughout Gura’s bedroom.
“Wait,” says Ame, “what’s that scratching sound?”
“Hmm?” goes Gura, confused. “My bed. What else could it be? Doesn’t yours make the same funny scratchy noises?”
“What? No.”
“Huh. How do you make the cardboard stop being noisy then? Also do you have any tips to make this more comfortable? It’s all hard and not-soft.”
“Cardboard?”
“Yeah, Amelia, the cardboard. How many blankets do you need to put so it stops being hard?”
“I, ah,” stutters Amelia. She goes silent. After a short pause, she simply says “You know what Gura, how about I drop by tomorrow to personally assess the situation.”
Gura doesn’t quite understand why, but she wouldn’t be one to pass on Ame coming over. “Okay, sure! Thanks!”
Ame stifles a yawn. “No problem Gura.”
“Oh and Ame?”
“… Yes, Gura?” Amelia’s voice was oddly laced with worry. Gura, for the life of her, couldn’t fathom why Ame could possibly be nervous.
“Do you think my tail is vertical or horizontal?”
“… What?”
“Is my tail vertical like a shark or horizontal like a whale?”
“Huh?”
“Do you think I’m adopted, Ame?”
Another pause at the other end of the line. Gura is about to repeat the question when Ame’s voice comes up, tired, quiet. “Gura, it’s four AM. I’m going to sleep now, okay?”
“But Ame – ”
Click.
_______
It’s sometime after lunch the next day when Amelia Watson finds herself at Gura’s small studio apartment. Gura excitedly swings the door open, grinning from ear to ear.
The detective stands at the doorway, absolutely dumbfounded.
“Oho,” goes Gura, smug. “I see you are absolutely flabbergasted by my humble abode.”
Without moving a muscle or speaking a word, Amelia’s eyes dart down to look at Gura. Dart back up to scan the apartment again.
“Behold, Amelia Watson,” Gura announces dramatically with a flourish of an arm, “my incredible collection of human furniture!”
Amelia pinches the bridge of her nose. “Gura,” she says, her voice strained, “you’re supposed to take the furniture out of the boxes and assemble them.”
Gura, former resident of Atlantis, had no idea that the furniture that came in boxes were meant to be assembled.
The entire space is decorated with an assortment of boxes, some small, others large, each arranged in their proper place in the house… if they were actually out of the boxes and assembled. The detective could see the dining area, a medium-sized box with the black and white image of a cheap dining table printed on it. There are various stains on the surface, some food, some probably liquid. The box is flanked by two slightly smaller boxes with images of chairs on them.
At the far end of the room, a television, placed atop another box that’s probably supposed to be the entertainment shelf. Next to it, in the corner, is a boxed table, and a boxed lamp. Everywhere the detective would look, she’d see a box with a printed image on its side indicating what it’s supposed to be. From her vantage point at the doorway, the entire room looks like a powerpoint slide of what a definite non-human thinks a human abode should look like. A mess of pasted images on a stock slide of an apartment.
“At least she figured out how to pull the television out of the box,” says Amelia Watson under her breath.
“Of course I pulled the TV out of the box! It’s just like the PC, right? Enma told me about that.” Gura chuckles to herself, gestures toward her streaming set up. Her PC is placed on top of a boxed computer table, with another box set in front of it. The chair, probably. “Keeping the TV in the box. That’s so silly.”
Amelia squints long and hard at the lamp box perfectly nestled in the corner of the room. “Yup. Silly.”
The detective grabs Gura by the shoulders. Looks her right in the eyes. “Gura, listen,” she says, “we’re going to open all the boxes today and build your furniture.”
A mixture of confusion and surprise is clearly plastered on Gura’s face. It takes her a while to process. Ame continues to stare the shorter girl down.
“Wait,” goes Gura, at last, “there’s stuff inside the other boxes?”
_______
The room quickly turns into a mess of furniture parts and screws of all shapes and sizes. Gura feebly attempts to jam two leg parts together while Ame attempts to discern how the rails in cabinets are meant to be installed.
“Ame, can we please look at the instructions?” asks Gura, tired of this overly complex puzzle game for adults.
“No.” answers Amelia, sternly, as she screws in a rail lopsided.
“But Ame.”
“Listen, Gura, listen.”
“… I’m listening.”
“Looking at the instructions is cheating, you hear? Cheating.”
“How – ”
“Just trust me okay.”
“I wanna cheat now.”
“You shut up and try to figure out where your table legs go, shark breath.”
“… okay.”
_______
“Hey Gura,” goes Ame, suddenly, quietly.
Gura looks up, at Ame. The detective stares out the window, her expression pensive, her eyes glazed over, lost in thought. Gura recognizes this rare expression. The rare moments when Amelia seems to give in to the part of her that wants to feel.
“What’s up, Watson?”
Ame seems to weigh her words carefully. The bright light of the afternoon sky is cast on her features. Bright blue eyes, golden blonde hair. Lips pressed together as she hums to herself. A part of Gura wishes she could take a picture with her memory so she could have the image before her to remember for the rest of her life.
“Do you ever want me to go back in time again?” says Ame, quietly, still looking outside.
“What do you mean?”
“To Atlantis. When I meddled with it back then. You stopped me. Do you regret it? Do you think you did the right thing?”
It’s Gura’s turn to look outside the window. Out at the endless blue sky.
She closes her eyes, for just a moment. Remembers a time when she knew nothing of the surface world.
In the depths of Atlantis there wasn’t any dumb human furniture. No hours of the Sad Girl. No streams to fret about. Back there, back home. Salt water upon her skin. Surrounded by the endless cold of the deep dark blue.
In the back of her mind, Gura replays her first few moments on land. How the sun warmed her skin. How her first lungful of air felt like fire expanding in her rib cage.
Gura opens her eyes. Lazy white clouds crawl across the sky.
She looks at Amelia Watson. At the blue eyes with the barest tinge of pink, waiting patiently for a response.
Gura looks at Ame, at how the detective looks like she’s waiting for an answer, at how tightly she clutches the special pocket watch around her waist. The shark thinks that it’s such an Ame thing to do. To ask a question but dread the answer. To want to know but be unsure if she’s doing the right thing. Gura wonders if Ame would simply time travel away if she spoke her mind. Gura shakes her head. Chuckles to herself.
“Sometimes Ame, I don’t know if I’m doing the right thing. Maybe I’m doing everything wrong. Maybe I’m doing everything right.”
Gura points to the newly assembled entertainment center. “That. That looks wrong though.” It’s a mess of shelves, some crammed in diagonally, some even vertically. The entire shelving unit is tilted a little too dangerously to the far right. The TV delicately perched upon it looks like it could fall over if so much as sneezed on. There are a handful of screws on the floor that look like they should have gone in somewhere to give the thing some form of stability.
The expression on Ame’s face shifts. She exhales, deeply. Releases her hold on her watch.
“No, that’s totally correct,” says Ame, smugly grinning at Gura. She adds, “We do need to buy you a mattress though. For your bed frame.”
“What’s a mattress?”
_______
“Ame, do we call Ina for help yet?”
“Shut up, we got this okay, we don’t need Ina to fix this.”
“But Ame, why is the table all legs and… too little table?”
“It’s part of the process Gura.”
“What? I’m calling Ina.”
“Gura if you call Ina, I’m telling her about what you did to her closet.”
“… fine, you win Watson.”
_______
The sun is beginning to set when the duo call it quits.
They lie on the floor, counting the cracks on Gura’s ceiling, surrounded by various furniture bits and pieces.
“Let’s crash at Ina’s tonight,” says Ame.
“Don’t you think she’ll be busy?” asks Gura.
“Lemme check real quick.”
A flash, and a low rumble. Gura looks to her side to see that Watson had time traveled away. A few beats pass, and the detective zaps back in.
“Texting too uncool for you, Watson?” teases Gura.
“It’s only an abuse of power if you’re lame,” answers Ame.
Gura laughs. “She busy? I want to eat her cooking.”
“I went to the past and asked her if she had anything planned. She asked if anything was wrong and I said ‘oh no everything’s fine don’t worry’ and she just said ‘okay so you and Gura will be okay with spicy noodles later or should we order pizza?’”
“What did you say?” says Gura.
“I said ‘the future depends on there being spicy noodles later.’” answers Ame, grinning.
“Nice.”
A few moments of silence. Gura finds herself mentally tracing the line of Ame’s jaw, silhouetted by the light of the almost-gone sun.
“Hey Ame,” says Gura at last, “do you ever think about how profoundly you affect the future with these little jumps of yours?”
Ame hums, chuckles to herself. “Not really.” She turns on her side to face Gura. “If time is like a pool, and your every action causes a ripple throughout, isn’t it more fun to just cause as many ripples as you can rather than watch a still, unmoving pond?”
“I still think about our first few meetings,” says Gura, her voice more quiet than usual.
“Do you think I did the wrong thing?” asks Ame. Her voice is steady, too steady. Gura knows better than anyone when the practiced detective is trying to hide behind her facade.
“No, it just amazes me how everything turned out, you know?” Gura says, softly.
“Feeling very sentimental today, are we, Gura? Sad Girl Hours again?”
Gura shakes her head. “No, I’m feeling quite happy right now. Especially since you’re here with me. You make me feel profound.” She grins at Ame, who looks away.
“Ah,” goes the detective, “what should I say in response to that?”
“Nothing,” says Gura.
“Tell me something Gura,” says Ame, her voice lower and softer than it has been all day.
“Yeah?”
“I know I may have influenced your decisions, but why did you end up coming to the surface world?”
Gura closes her eyes. Imagines the breaking of the waves, that first real lungful of air out of water. She imagines the rays of the sun of her face. She imagines the light of the world somehow seeping into her and warming her to her very core. In her mind’s eye, she can imagine a bright smile, blond hair, blue eyes. A detective, wild and reckless, waiting for her at the shoreline.
Gura grins, jagged teeth glinting in the relative darkness of the apartment.
“I just wanted to feel the warmth of the sun,” says Gura.