Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Dark as ink, deep as the night sky. You chose this place. And it waits for you.

        All she has to do is jump.

Follow us, darling, heed our song. Dance with us, for eternity.

        Just jump. It will be painless, she knows. Peaceful, even.

Who will remember your story?

        The moon tracks higher above. She is running out of time. Just jump, jump, jump.

What do you wait for? Are you... scared?

        Scared? Is she scared? Scared of what?

        Of the truth.

Just forget, forget, forget... Dance with us, darling.

        Ren wants to forget. She wants... to dance. For all eternity. She should jump. Why, when after all these years, she finally gets the opportunity... why is she afraid to jump? This... is what she has wanted, is it not?

The sea will welcome you, it will wrap you in its warm embrace. You will be at peace, for all eternity. Just jump, sweet darling.

        Her dress flutters with the night breeze as she grips the rail, as she stares down at the pier. Beneath her, the waves churn. The song of the sea changes pitch, and now she can clearly hear her mother's voice:

        Ren! Come, my sweet, dance with me... Ren? Why don't you answer me, Ren? You trust me, don't you? You love me, don't you? Take my hand, Ren...

        Ren reaches forward, towards the water, towards her mother's soft voice. She wants... to hold... her mother's hand. She leans further over the rail, but before she can grasp at the hand that awaits her beneath the waves, the voice grows deeper... Now her father calls:

        Ren... come, my dear, dance with me. Dance among the truths and the lies, among the goods and the evils, and promise me... Promise me, my dear, that you will not lose your soul. Can I trust you with that, Ren?

        She falters, chokes on her words. On her tears. Her mother's hand is gone. Her father's voice fades. Where... where have they gone? Where are they going?

        They are beneath the waves, of course. There was only one thing to do, then... She must jump.

        And so she does.

Ren?

Where are you going?

The voices that had seemed so beautiful and melancholy above the surface warp into hoarse rasps beneath the waves. Sharp claws scratch her skin and an iron grasp locks her ankle.

She jumped... she jumped... she jumped...

A tough one to crack, was she not?

This one took longer than the others...

Beneath that hard exterior... she is soft... her broken heart unguarded.

It has been so long... since we found... a heart so pure... yet a soul so damaged.

A delicious feast!

        They lied, she thinks, when they told me drowning would be a peaceful way to die.

Lauren's return to the waking world is slow. It takes a great deal of effort to force her lungs to breathe in. To force her heart to beat. To force her eyes to flutter open. There's an odd sensation in her arm. A stinging pain. Something is pricking her skin. She turns over in the sand...

        ... and freezes.

        There is a man touching her arm.

        A man is touching her, and her only thought is —

        Beautiful. Oh, words could not describe. In the full moon's light, his face seems cut from marble. Long black hair brushing his shoulders and into his eyes. And oh, his eyes. Mesmerizing. Shifting shades of soft blue, as dark and deep and sad as the sea itself.

        Feeling bolder than ever before, Lauren allows her eyes trace his form, his sculpted body. She takes note of hundreds of white scars marring his flesh. When she has had her fill, when she has traced every inch of his chest with her burning gaze, she finds herself looking lower.

        Her breath stutters in her throat.

        His legs... well, it appears he has none. Where his legs should be, she sees only a strong, brilliantly blue tail.

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She is frozen for a moment. Has she finally gone mad? The man has a tail. A goddamn tail. She's obviously dead, because this can only be hell.

        She opens her mouth, closes it again.

        And finally, finally, she screams.

It is shortly after sunrise when she sees him again. It has been several hours since her scream prompted the man (the fish?) to escape.

        She spent the first couple hours cowering in a corner, questioning herself. And when a while passes and the fish does not resurface, she makes it her mission to explore her surroundings. She is in a small, rocky cave. There is sand beneath her bare feet and a little lake of crystalline water that feeds into the sea. From the mouth of the cave, she can make out the horizon, far away where the sea meets the fresh dawn sky.

        Lauren watches as the amber sun climbs higher. When she turns back, she notices a bubbling from within the lake, and he pops out.

        She scrambles back, gripping the cave wall. Only his head and torso is above the surface, but Lauren can see the tail shifting beneath the clear water.

        She's fairly certain her ankle is broken. If not that, at least a tendon is torn. She cannot walk, let alone run from him. She extends her arm — the one without the bloody claw mark — and careful not to disturb her ankle, she picks up a particularly jagged rock.

        Their gazes clash, awaiting the other's next move. Lauren has already memorized his face: every hard angle and small blemish.

        The fish exhales a little, tilting his head to analyze her. She doesn't like the way he looks at her: as though he has already mapped every inch of her soul.

        She tosses the rock in the water, aiming for his nose.

        He ducks below to avoid it, and does not resurface.

        Lauren lets out a breath she did not realize she was holding in.

When he returns, it is midday. He does not speak, though she knows he can understand her. Instead, he pulls himself up and sits down beside her with his fin still swishing in the water.

        Lauren leers at him. "Back again, are you? Going to sing a little song for me and make me jump in the waves?"

        He... does not reply.

        "Well... you're not getting anything out of me." She huffs, turns promptly, and decides to ignore him.

        Perhaps if she does not look at him, he will grow bored and leave her. Her chest feels tight.

        He watches silently as she tears the bottom of her sundress and uses it as a bandage over the long scratch over her arm. She would have used seaweed, but she didn't want to risk diving below the water to find some — not least because her injury was caused by the sea creatures themselves.

        It is only after he sleeps away that she can breathe properly again.

        She has spent the long hours piecing together a story. A story of a broken girl who travelled far from her home to a rusty pier and heard beautiful, beautiful, crooning voices from below the waves. A story of a girl who jumped. A story strong arms wrapping around this girl and dragging her to safety.

        For she understands, now, how she has come to be in this quiet cave so far from the pier.

        She owes him her life. And Lauren hates being indebted to someone she cannot trust.

She is watching the sun set when he reappears. He breaches the surface once more, plops down onto the sand and flaps his tail once.

        Somehow, Lauren does not find it within herself to be afraid. After all, if he wants to hurt her, he would have done so by now. He simply sits there, basking in the warm glory of a dying sun, and he watches her with those beautiful blue eyes. Lauren watches him with equal rapture, if not more. For he is a being of such beauty she cannot even begin to comprehend. He is strong and lean and gorgeous and dangerous and forbidden.

        He should not be real.

        She does not belong in his world. Their paths should never have crossed.

        Lauren is not naïve. She has heard the stories, the myths, the legends. She knows what he is. Where he comes from. Who he answers to. She knows that those beautiful, melodious voices that dragged her under were kin of this creature.

        She is angry, though she isn't sure at what. She was so prepared to die that night... and this creature refused her that. She is also angry at herself, for believing those beautiful sirens would allow her peace for eternity. So she meets his deep gaze — of long-forgotten songs and buried truths and sailors lost in storms — and she tells him, "thank you."

        Can he feel her emotions? Can he feel her gratitude?

        He does have other ways to communicate. He shuffles closer to her, and holds out his palm.

        An offering?

        He's offering her a dead fish, wrapped in seaweed like a little present.

She only lasts twenty minutes of stubborn refusal before she finally accepts the gift. She is starving, and there doesn't seem to be any other food source around. She's still nursing an injured ankle.

        It's a disgusting combination, this fish and seaweed. Lauren prays to the gods that she'll never have to taste it again.

        The fish-man watches keenly as she eats, gaging her reaction.

        Lauren gags and gives him a painful smile. "Thanks! It's... really good!"

        Seeming content with her response, he bobs back underwater. When she's sure he's gone, she crawls to a secluded corner of the cave and vomits.

The first night is unbearable. She is cold and so very thirsty. The scratch on her arm has faded to a pink line, but it no longer pains to touch. Her ankle gives a dull ache when she attempts to move, yet she can walk. A small victory.

        Somehow Lauren drags herself along the cave wall to a rock formation directly over her head. She sticks out her tongue and collects the fresh droplets.

The creature returns the next morning with not another fish, but a fresh oyster. She likes this new meal, and when she tells him as much, she almost swears there is a smile quirking his lips at the praise.

        Days of this give and take pass. Her ankle is fully healed now. She can walk a little. She quenches her thirst by using a clam as a bowl and dipping it in the lake. She is unsure if the water is fresh, but it doesn't taste too salty, and supposes she'll be fine. She uses a small cavity hidden behind some boulders as a toilet.

        And every minute she waits for her companion. He arrives like clockwork, three times a day — sunrise, midday, and sunset — with a new gift.

        A shrimp.

        Some sea snails.

        A whole lobster, once.

        She still likes the oyster best, though. She reserves it for later.

        He never visits her at night, and she finds herself longing for him during the cold, dark hours. She contents herself with watching the stars, scanning the sea for a nearby ship.

        He appears every dawn with fresh scars marking his raw skin.

        She hates his silence.

His head pops out of the water one morning as usual and Lauren declares, "You need a name!"

        The creature stumbles back a little, startled by her announcement, and nearly drops the dead crab in his hand.

        "If this — " she wags her finger between the two of them, "is to be a regular occurrence, I can't keep calling you as The Fish. Don't you have a name given by your, um, your kin?"

        He scoffs, rolling his eyes, and picks up the crab. He lobs it at her, and she catches it.

        "How about Crabby," She grumbles, pulling the crab apart. "It suits you. It was just a question, fish."

        The perfect name comes to her when she has her teeth sunk deep in crab flesh.

        "Blue," she whispers. "I'll call you Blue, like the ocean, and the sky, and blueberries." Blueberries. She hasn't had one in so long, she'd almost forgotten what they were. The sense of longing returns. She's getting better at pushing it down. "Blue," she says again, "like your tail, like your eyes. Isn't that nice?"

        He chews on a piece of crab for a bit, mulling it over. Then, he gives her a sweet, dazzling smile. Showing all his teeth.

"Why do they hurt you?" She works up the nerve to ask one morning.

        The two of them lay on the cool sand, staring up at the rocky ceiling of the sea cave. It is raining outside. The creature has propped himself up on one elbow, his tail swishing lazily.

        Lauren traces Blue's scars with her finger. He tenses under her touch, but does not move away.

        "Every night, they hurt you," she murmurs. "Don't think I haven't noticed."

        He covers her hand with his larger one, gently rubbing her knuckles. With her other hand, she reaches up and cards her fingers through his long hair. Blue leans into her touch, nuzzling against her hand. A pleasant rumble comes from his chest. He has been craving an affectionate touch. In another world, he could have been a passionate lover.

        She runs her nail down a scar below his belly button. "The sirens did this..." She whispers. They hurt one of their own. Did they ever even consider him one of their own? He was a siren just as they were.

        Why don't you sing, Blue?

        "Have you ever had a family, Blue? People that... people that loved you?"

        Do you even know what love is? All you have ever known is pain and longing.

        "Why don't you sing, Blue? A beautiful voice is all sirens have. But you are not like your kin. You do not even speak." She can feel the sorrow that melts off his skin. She can feel his craving, his heartache. Her savior is just as broken as she. "What happened to your voice, Blue?"

        They took your voice, didn't they? Just as they take everything else. Did they take your soul from you, too?

        When evening comes and he turns to leave, she almost stops him. Almost. For she has become a coward. She lets him go.

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He does not arrive one evening like he usually does. Instead, he turns up hours later, when the night has fallen and the moon has risen.

        She paces the length of the cave, limping only a little. Finally, there is a gentle bubbling in the stream at the mouth of the cave, and he makes his presence known. Blue pulls himself to shore, his head hung low. His damp locks drip over his face, his shoulders drooping, and he is —

        Utterly defeated.

        Lauren is too furious to dwell on that.

        "Where have you been?" She screams, scared and worried and terrified all at once. "I thought you were — " she throws her head back, heart racing. "It has been hours and you — Blue, you — by the gods, I thought, I thought the worst, I — "

        She freezes.

        “Blue...”

        The siren struggles a little, but it seems as though moving pains him too much. He sprawls on the beach and closes his eyes, letting out a quick shuddering breath. Lauren drops to her knees beside him, her fingers brushing his skin.

        The crystal-clear lake has turned red.

        His tail — his gorgeous tail — is torn beyond repair. Deep gashes and marks of every kind scratch his blue scales. He is bleeding nearly everywhere: below his ear, around his torso, and on his scales.

        Lauren presses her ear to his chest. She hears a faint heartbeat. He has time, but not much. Lauren goes into autopilot, fumbling for her seaweed collection. Years of training kick in, and she binds his tail as tight as she can.

        His lashes flutter a little, and she places her ear to his chest, resting, breathing, sobbing.

        She has grown attached to this creature.

        "Come on," she breathes. "Get up. You can do it. Please, Blue..."

        He shifts, his tail flopping uselessly. His eyes squeeze tight in anguish. Her heart aches for him. He is so, so cold. She drapes herself on his body in a desperate attempt to warm him.

        She can feel a faint, steady heartbeat against her cheek.

        Moments pass, and then —

        She feels rather than sees him tuck a strand of red hair behind her ear. He pats her back, with a gentle tap.

        She looks up at him, into his deep blue eyes. She sees sadness there, but also... adoration.

        He smiles as her tears drip upon his nose.

He stays for much longer this time, healing. Hours. A whole day, maybe. She does not keep track. She dares not let him leave. She wants to keep him trapped here, in this cave, with her forever.

        It is not blissful happiness.

        But it is close enough.

        While they wait for his tail to mend, Lauren has developed a habit of tracing his skin. Tracing his scars. She has memorized nearly every one of them now.

        She tells him stories.

        Stories about her friends and family back home. Her job. Her enemies.

        He doesn't speak. Just curls closer to her, sharing her warmth.

        At some point, she drifts into a fitful sleep. When she wakes, he is gone.

There is a change in the salty air.

        She has been growing restless. Lauren is a woman born to run; staying cooped in this small cave is driving her insane. She needs a way out. She needs to escape. Her attempt at ending her life was foiled by this merman savior, but now that she's been given a second chance, she intends to make the most of it.

        The sun sets below the horizon, and Blue does not come. The night passes, the sun rises once more, and still, he does not come. The sun tracks higher into midday, and really, he ought to be back by now.

        Has he forgotten me?

        Perhaps Blue had noticed her recovering health, she thinks a day later.

        Perhaps he thought she no longer needed him.

        He's still injured. How will he...

        Perhaps the other sirens found him.

        Perhaps they finally killed him.

        Three more days pass without an inkling of his tail, and her hurt morphs into anger.

        She is done hiding away in this quiet paradise. She must return to her world. She has already explored every inch of this cave. There is no other exit. Her only chance is to dive into the lake. The pier is not far away; she must swim.

        And so, for the second time, she holds her breath and jumps.

As soon as her flesh hits the water, the whispering begins again. The song echoes, hoarse, rasping, grating, horrible.

And so she returns... returns... returns...

Did you... enjoy your little... break in paradise, darling... darling... darling?

        They dive upon her like pigeons to bread: a feast of creatures with forked tails and humanoid features swirling around her body, creating a whirlpool with the beats of their tails, groping and scratching whatever part of her they could.

Did she really think —

Humans are known to be stupid, but this one —

        She struggles against their talons, hard and fast. Salty tears stream down her cheeks, but she doesn't dare open her mouth to scream.