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There are ample experiences that simply cannot be fathomed through words, or stories, or anything other than the experience itself.
This night, with the wind a bitter tempest and the sky a black so rich it almost looked colorful, Kaedehara Kazuha would discover that drowning is one of these experiences.
Poetry and pages from novels describe drowning as more of a quick hazed panic than anything. But for Kazuha, it was nothing of the sort.
The descent into the drowning was fast, though. It was simple. Kazuha had been trekking along the Inazuman mountain range with nothing but a song on his lips and the clothes on his back. Then, he rounded an unfortunate corner. He had his guard down, and had let the music in the breeze get the better of him. He saw the Shogunate before he could sense them, heard their exponentially multiplying footsteps as he turned on his heels and ran like the wind. He ducked into caves and wedged himself between boulders, but it was no use; this time, the Shogunate wouldn’t let the poet slip from their fingers. And Kazuha knew that these sleepless nights sacrificed as time to run away were not sustainable. He needed to leave for good.
And that was what drove him to the ocean. Surely, if he could get onto The Alcor— a ship that sat on the horizon with a rebellious, formidable captain he heard whispers of— and beg to be its cargo, he could sleep knowing there was an ocean between him and his past and all of the confusion he left within it.
Now, what Kazuha did could be considered stealing, because it was, but he decided that his cause was as good as any could be. Once he reached the base of the mountain, distant chatter from Shogunate stationed around the small beach drifting into earshot, Kazuha ran for it. He ran to the beached rowboat, and with all of his might he pushed the boat into the lapping waves. The cries of surprised shoulders faded with the crashing water as he was leaping into the small boat, and as he whirled around to use the powers of his Vision as a makeshift propeller, he was met with the defeated stares of the Shogunate, in a line on the beach as they stared after him with shared dismay, anger. But also a shared awe.
This guy really is taking a rowboat out into the storm. That was what they all must be thinking. What a fucking lunatic.
Kazuha would argue that he didn’t have much choice.
To the surprise of absolutely no one, this plan was a failure.
Thanks to his Vision, the better part of the journey was relatively painless. With The Alcor becoming clearer instead of a shape carved out of the horizon, Kazuha was grateful that the ship remained anchored. The sun was well past set, and the breeze told him so. Goosebumps traveled up and down his arms, amplified by the splashing waves, and with the arduous hours spend pushing further and further into the churning waters, Kazuha was left alone with his thoughts.
It was startling how little he had processed about what had happened. His friend. The shogun. The lightning. The Vision and how bright it shined before it burned, burned, burned at the skin at Kazuha’s palm, so fierce it made him scream as he fled the scene.
Absently, Kazuha stares at the trail of bandages adorning his fingers and forearm. He experimentally brings his fingers together in a fist and squeezes. He flinches.
It still hurts a little bit.
But that was to be expected.
This brief interlude of thought would cost Kazuha his breath, and possibly his life. Impossibly so, the ocean had transformed from serene to turbulent within the span of seconds. The dark sky sparkling with stars and a crescent moon were immediately overtaken by an army of storm clouds, but it was so dark that there was an illusion of an ominous gray blanket washing over the sky. The waves, previously serving as nothing more than lumps in the landscape, lengthened and rose like giants. In fact, the approaching wave was so large that it covered the entire boat in a shadow.
Kazuha feels as if the blood drained from his body as he looks up, and up, eyes searching for the peak of the wave reaching him. His hands shake as he tries to deploy his Vision; to maybe carve out an opening with anemo, or part the seas for crying out loud. Yet it was futile, because he was hazy with insomnia and terror and self-deprecation at how stupid he had been.
Then, the rest was inevitable. Kazuha flung himself from the boat seconds before it was overtaken by an angry wave. A quick cast over his shoulder confirmed that what was once a rowboat was now a collection of splinters and shards of wood.
His eyes sting from the saltwater as he finds himself in a limbo. Be pushed down by a wave. Resurface, suffocate, cry for help. Repeat. Again. And again. Until the cycle was broken because Kazuha was pushed so far under the surface that for a second, he wasn’t sure which way was up and down. The wave shoved him underwater with a force strong enough to make his skin ache as if he had been slapped, and he forcibly did three or four somersaults. And in this moment, as Kazuha felt his body dragging itself further below, he knew he was drowning. And he knew that this was something that could never be fully put into words.
The water was dark, so much so that he could barely see his hands in front of his face. He forced his eyes to stay open, even as the ocean water stung, and through the blurriness he could see that the surface was slipping further away from his outstretched finger tips. A trail of bubbles connected his mouth to the surface as, he discovered, he was screaming. He knew this was stupid, knew he was wasting oxygen, but he couldn’t help it. His clothes were heavy, so much so that he may as well tie a cannonball to his boot. He thrashed within the fabric, panicked shrieks dying as soon as the noise made contact with the water. His breath was short and he couldn’t think, couldn’t form a single thought.
It felt as if the shogun herself were pushing him down, down, and his vision was giving way, the water was swallowing him whole.
Please, is the first real word Kazuha can muster as a thought, and he’s sure the word leaves his lips before the world goes black with him drowning and plummeting and sinking into a dark world.
_____
Earning the reputation of a fearless captain didn’t come easy for Beidou.
She earned every whisper, every breath of good word to her name. With reputation came great experience, and in this experience, Beidou had seen a lot to put it simply.
But not this. Whatever this is.
The night was cold, stormy as the waves rose high enough to make the ship rock violently from where it was anchored. Beidou hardly spared the turbulence a thought; she had seen far fiercer conditions than these.
Beidou dislodged herself from the captain’s cabin and the second her boots hit the wood of the deck, a downpour fell on their heads. It was almost impressive how quickly the once somewhat-stormy atmosphere was replaced with buckets of rain pelting themselves onto Beidou and her crew. Perhaps it wasn’t wise to remain anchored after all.
And that was where the situation began. Beidou climbed to the crow’s nest with her spyglass extended with the intention to scope out the weather and conditions before proceeding. First, she assessed how rapidly the waves were rising. Then, she took note of the most efficient path for the ship to proceed.
But then came the curve ball.
Through the circle of vision the spyglass gave her, Beidou’s field of vision briefly scanned over a rowboat. Wait, a rowboat? Frantically, Beidou brings the spyglass left and right to attempt to find the boat again to ensure this wasn’t just an illusion. But sure enough, Beidou’s gaze settled on the rowboat once again and watched as the comedically small boat bobbed up and down in the rising and falling waves before shortly being blown to bits under the gravity of the tide. But the boat was empty. Beidou feels a sense of dread establish itself in her stomach.
Mere meters away from the boat, through the slosh of crashed waves and sea foam, she could see something distinct: bubbles. Coming from underwater, rapidly.
Before she could think this through, Beidou strapped the spyglass to her hip once again and all but flew down the crow’s nest to the deck once again. Beidou was the last one to make sacrifices without cause, the last one to be reckless. She was the fearless captain after all.
And in this moment, Beidou had a hunch. Experience be damned, she was going to follow it.
“Captain,” is Juza’s urgent call as his legs race to keep up with Beidou’s determined strides, “I’m guessing we’re preparing to raise the anchor?” She grunts in recognition, and Juza either doesn’t notice or doesn’t chose to acknowledge how Beidou was taking off her cloak and boots. “What’s your next order?”
Carelessly, Beidou tosses the clothing somewhere across the deck. She looks Juza square in the eyes and says, “prepare a lifeboat.” Then, electing not to provide any further context (mostly because she didn’t have any), Beidou turned on her heel and left Juza spluttering as she approached the edge of the ship. She assessed that the rowboat’s remains and the mysterious bubbles were about twenty meters away. Despite her excellent swimming skills, with the waters this choppy, Beidou assumed that swimming this far would take her thirty seconds or more.
Preparing a lifeboat could take three to four minutes and, if Beidou’s hunch is right— which it usually is— whoever was once in that rowboat does not have this kind of time.
In all of Beidou’s experience as a captain, she had never experienced this. This undeniable hunch that no matter what, she had to follow despite its clear lack of sound reasoning.
Even as Beidou leapt from the ship’s edge into the churning water, careful to dive away from the boat, her crew did not question her. Instead, as she plummeted to the ocean, the last sounds she heard were of her sailors preparing to lower the boat. She grins to herself before she penetrates the surface.
As Beidou kicks fiercely, she knows the water is cold, yet does not process this fact as anything more than an unpleasant tingle along her limbs. Expertly, she dove under waves and pumped her arms and legs frantically to approach the area where she swore the rowboat had once been.
First, she peers underwater and opens her eyes, but is met with nothing other than an endless abyss of dark blue.
Then, surfacing and taking a breath to soothe her burning lungs, Beidou pushes forward ten strokes more, body sloshing back and forth with the heaving waves, and tries once again.
At first, she doesn’t see it. Or him. But then, she looks ahead of her. Her hunch was right after all.
She sees the trail of bubbles before anything else, yet doesn’t need to see more before she’s already taking a gasp of breath at the surface and all but plummeting after the trail. The more she descends, the more she can feel the pressure squeezing against her head and ears, but she braves onward. All she needs to see is a hand, limp and outstretched as the owner of it was dragged further and further down. Beidou’s grasp was certain as she grabbed the hand firmly, and let her burning eyes shut once her legs bumped all the strength they could to fight towards the surface.
Once Beidou does breach the surface, she gasps, drinks in as much air as possible within the half second she gave herself, and then went about pulling the stranger to the surface. The first thing she noticed was how heavy he was due to his layers and layers of robes and clothing. He seemed to be lost in it as, once she pulls his form to the surface, it took a second for her to find his face from where it was lost in scarves and hair.
Thanks to Beidou’s impressive strength, she was able to keep the two of them afloat, though the stranger’s weight sagged too far into her for him to be conscious. She tugs at the robes and scarves and lets the ocean grab them and sink. As the two bob over and under waves, Beidou holds a hand over his parted lips. Nothing.
Her arm was firmly slotted around the man’s— no, the boy’s— ribcage, his startlingly limp head weak against her shoulder. Beidou hardly had to holler for help as her crew had been quick to ready the lifeboat and leap into the icy waters after her. She knew once the adrenaline and horror wore off, she’d have that warm fuzzy feeling in her chest for the competence of her crew.
Without a word of question, Juza takes the other boy’s side, and it isn’t long before the boy’s weak body is handed off to the sea of hands grabbing for him. Beidou and Juza are pulled to the lifeboat as well, robes and cloaks awaiting them (a nice sentiment despite the pouring rain).
Now that the boy had been pulled from the water, Beidou got a better look at him. His hair fell to his shoulders, sticking to the sides of his pale face. A single red streak was stark against the head of white hair and gentle features.
“He’s not breathing,” Juza confirms, yet doesn’t waste a second to launch into CPR. Beidou had rescued fallen soldiers from the water countless times. Some made it, some didn’t, but none of those times felt close to this one. It didn’t matter if this boy was over twenty. In her eyes, he was a kid, just a kid. And something under that shell of hers needed him to make it.
As the lifeboat slowly was lifted from the water back to the boat, Juza’s CPR paid off. He had been in the middle of delivering one last pump to his chest when the kid sputtered. His striking eyes sprung open, his shaking hands pressed themselves onto the edge of the bench he had been strewn across, and suddenly he was sputtering and choking. Quickly, Beidou’s hands are on him, turning him off of his back onto his stomach where he coughed out the miles of water that had infiltrated his lungs.
She takes a seat beside him, her hand supportively patting his back as he chokes and spits. “You’re alright, kid,” she’s murmuring, “we’ve got you.” She isn’t sure what she’s saying at first, but the way his shoulders sag a little affirms that it was the right thing to say. Beidou is itching to ask who he was, why he was here, why he was on a lifeboat in the middle of the ocean in the eye of a storm, but these questions would not be answered, for he met her eyes and promptly passed out.
She pats his shoulder once more, though she knows he can’t feel it.
We’ve got you.
_____
A day and a half after the Grand Rescue as Juza would call it, the crew already collectively adopted Kaedehara Kazuha. After he’d passed out, Beidou had left him to sleep in her quarters (her crew already teased her for having a soft spot for the kid which she started to openly admit after giving him free drinks). Mostly, Beidou didn’t know much about the guy aside from his name.
The sad look in Kazuha’s eyes spoke for itself enough that Beidou didn’t feel the need to pry much, but she pieced together that he was on the run from the shogun. She gathered that he lost someone, or something. The thing was that he hadn’t mentioned anything that alluded to this, but he didn’t need to. It was all over his face.
And, speak of the devil, the poet himself tapped the door of the captain’s quarters with two knuckles. Yesterday, he attempted to begin his work on the ship with the rest of the crew; Beidou sentenced him to a day of rest given the modest fact that he had nearly died. And that he had possibly been clinically dead for a few seconds.
“Well hey there, Kaedehara Kid,” Beidou greets, holding the door open as a sign for the kid to step inside. He doesn’t take it, and instead tips his head downward in a respectful motion.
“Captain,” Kazuha returns. Beidou had already given up on trying to get the guy to drop the formalities. “My apologies for the intrusion.”
“Nah, you’re all good.” There was something funny in the contrast of how Beidou and Kazuha spoke. “If you’re asking for work, you’re out of luck.” Kazuha visibly sags, and Beidou tries her best not to imagine a sad kitten with the motion. “Why don’t you come inside?”
Kazuha’s eyes wander to the quarters behind Beidou. She was starting to get the impression that he didn’t take many breaks in his life. “If there truly is no service I can provide…” He trails off momentarily before saying softly, “I’ll come inside.” That might be the simplest sentence he’s ever said.
The two shared drinks which consisted of Kazuha drinking tea and Beidou drinking from her flask. Their “conversation” was more one-sided than anything. Beidou told stories about some of her wildest adventures, but she knew Kazuha was right with her as he nodded, laughed softly when appropriate. For a second, that sad, sad look lost its grip on him and he looked a little bit content.
“I have a present for ya, kiddo,” Beidou says suddenly, and Kazuha almost looks alarmed.
“I cannot accept,” he rushes to say, his tea mug being set down abruptly, “especially after all you have already done for me, I-”
“Settle down there,” Beidou chuckles. “It’s more of something to cheer you up a bit, that’s all.” Still looking uncomfortable, Kazuha stirs in his seat as Beidou turns her back to him to riffle through her quarters. She glanced behind chairs, on top of dressers… seriously, where did she put it?
Then, she heard the muffled meow.
“Ah, there you are you little rascal,” Beidou muses, her hands cupping under the mass of fur that had settled itself within a pile of discarded clothes on the floor. She lifts the cat into her arms gently, and walks slowly over to Kazuha as the few days spent with the creature signified that it was quite skittish. The white fur was stark against the cloth of her red cloak, the cat’s face pressed against her chest as she stepped in front of where Kazuha still sat at the table.
“Hope you’re a fan of felines,” Beidou starts, and takes Kazuha’s silence as a green light as she gently moves the cat from her arms and into Kazuha’s vacant lap. Kazuha is still quiet as she continues,
“It’s funny, really. Ningguang has always been more of a cat person than me, but heck I bet she’ll love this fella. We found ‘em the same day you turned up, actually. I went into town for some produce and poof, I’m on the ship and there’s a new member of my crew.” She watches with careful eyes as Kazuha’s trembling, bandaged hand carefully pats at the pale fur. It was almost as if the cat knew the boy as its head nuzzled into his touch, immediately starting to purr. Beidou momentarily wondered if the cat who scratched Juza upon being picked up had been replaced by this agreeable, domesticated one.
“Hm,” she hums, “that’s funny. It’s almost like you two know each other.” It was an off-handed, innocent comment, really. And truly, Beidou was bewildered by the response it elicited.
First, she thought the sniffling was due to Kazuha’s being sick or something. Then, she saw the way his lips pressed together in a harsh line, how his head ducked down so that his hair hid his eyes. But she saw the tears, oh there were so many. How long had he been crying for?
Something in her heart twists immediately at the sight, as if she’d touched a hot plate. “Hey, hey,” Beidou murmurs, brows drawn together as she really had no idea what she was comforting him for as she knelt onto the ground to get a better look at her face. He glances down sheepishly, hands shaking more as he sadly stroked his hands through the fur. “What’s wrong, kiddo?”
Kazuha exhales slowly, unevenly. His breath is shaky as he still won’t look up. “This cat,” he starts, voice starting to break. He tries to take a gulp of air, but it was futile. The walls were already coming down. “It- it was his.” Beidou doesn’t have to ask anything. Not about who he is, or where he went, because the very next second, Kazuha looked up and she almost wished he didn’t because it was the saddest sight she’d ever seen. His bright eyes were filled with endless tears, and Kaedehara Kazuha— the put-together poet who wreaked of elegance— was a mess of choked sobs and snot and nervous tremors.
Beidou’s so often gruff voice was very, very soft. “C’mere, kiddo,” she murmurs, arms wide open. Kazuha slumps into them, cat trapped between the two. She lets him cry, watches as the tears fall onto the unsuspecting creature’s fur. Eventually, he’s brave enough to wrap his arms around her back, and she rubs her hand up and down his spine as an attempt to keep him grounded from wherever it was that his mind was taking him.
Beidou isn’t sure how long they stay like that, because Kazuha is well out of tears by the time they start to pull away. By the time Beidou forces herself away from the embrace, the cat was fast asleep in Kazuha’s lap, and she watched to see that his hands no longer shook from where he pet the fur.
Kazuha bashfully wipes at his red-rimmed eyes and puffy cheeks, and she watches as he opens his mouth to provide a flowery apology. But, she holds up her hand. “Don’t,” she interjects. He closes his mouth promptly, and she grins. “Don’t you dare apologize.” She rises from her chair, and reaches out a hand to ruffle Kazuha’s hair. Something told her that this would become a habit, and the way Kazuha’s nose crinkled with unspoken, light-hearted annoyance confirmed this. Without saying anything, Beidou takes Kazuha’s now-empty tea mug and gives him a needed refill before taking her seat once more. Something told her they would be here for a while.
“So, Kaedehara Kid,” she prefaces, feet finding their way to the edge of the table and hands cradling the back of her head, “take it from the top. I wanna hear everything.”
Kazuha’s brows disappear behind his hair, but for the first time, he looks genuinely amused behind his tear-stained face. “Everything?” he prods, voice a little clogged.
“Everything.”
He smiles. Small, but real. And that was all Beidou could ask for.