Archive of Our Own ^beta

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There’s a girl on the surface. 

Atlantis has no shortage of cryptids and weirdos. Something new happens and it’s barely a surprise to anyone. A whale as pale as pearls taking off into the night sky? Sounds like a hoax, might be fake, but it’s still cool to think about. Some stories might be true. Most of the time they’re fake. 

The surface girl is real. 

Gura is hesitant. Her friends eagerly crowd around her front door, plans to go adventuring and see the sights all layered on top of one innocent query. 

“Wanna go up to the surface?” Hammerhead is asking, “We can go up when we get the fish sticks down the street. They always taste better dried out, yeah?” 

“There’s a rock-” Another exclaims. 

“Is this the same rock with that girl?” Gura asks pointedly. “That human?” 

Her friend's hem and haw over it. They aren’t being overly pushy about it, which quells some of Gura’s nerves. It’s easier to convince her to go out shopping. It’s a pleasant swim through her city. Atlantis glows, a shining gem in the dark of the ocean. 

At the end of it, her friends try to usher her upwards. She knows where that goes. She tries to be stubborn, but the other sharks are pulling out the baby Gura, she’s a big baby shark and, well, she can’t take that. She swims behind them unenthusiastically. 

“Why do you not wanna go?” A tiger shark asks her, “You’ve really dragged your fins through the sand on this one.” 

Gura huffs, her shoulders hiking up to her ears, “What does it matter? It’s just one human.”

“But isn’t it strange?" They gossip. “It’s one rock! One human! How did she get there? It’s a mystery!” 

Gura would count herself uninterested in it. It sounded fake and it sounded dumb. If there really was a human up on that rock, they were long dead from the burn of the sun or some other vulnerable thing that comes with humans. She’s expecting to see a body floating in the waves. 

The rock is tall and jagged. There’s a rock formation underneath it that fades down into hazy blue. One, small flat portion rests above the surface, just barely. Gura slows to a halt. Her friends have stopped as well, hovering in disbelief. 

There’s a pair of legs dipping merrily into the water. 

The human is real. Gura thinks. Curiosity drives her to swim forward, just a tad until she remembers where she is and reels back. Her friends are swimming to her side, their fins bristling. 

“Wait, wait, what if it’s like, a mage?" Hammerhead whispers frantically, “Those exist right?” 

“I don’t know!” Someone else hisses back, “Why don't you check?” 

“I’m scared!” 

“Is it really a human?” Gura asks quietly. Her friends go quiet. Gura watches the pair of feet above kick, up and down, the waves splashing and crying against the rock. Very slowly, Gura detaches herself from her friends. She’s rising to the surface, inch by inch, her heart hammering a wild tempo. She’s afraid, but curiosity has her peaking her head just above the water. 

It takes only a second to blink out the water from her eyes and adjust to the dryness of the air. It takes another for her gaze to settle on the surface girl. She doesn’t look like a sailor. She doesn’t look like she’s shipwrecked either. Her clothes are put together in perfect condition, her collared shirt a little loose and matted with water. Her skirt is dirty, but it doesn’t look like she had to tread water to get to that state. It doesn’t look like she’s been in the water at all. 

Her hair is dry. Her blonde bangs are parted by a hair clip. Her eyes are shining with ocean blues and sunset pinks. She has a smile that roots Gura to her spot. She’s aiming it right at her. 

“Ah.” Gura squeaks. 

“Ah.” The human mimics, the cheer in her expression seemingly doubling. “Nice to meet you.” 

Oh, she’s nice. Gura flounders. Some part of her was expecting the first human she met to be scary, with a trenchcoat and a hook for a hand. Instead, this girl was beaming at her. It brought out the freckles on her cheeks. Atlanteans don’t have freckles. It was something that drew Gura’s focus and made her stumble over her words, “Uh, um, hi.”

“Hi.” The girl says. 

“You,” Gura stutters, “Are you new?”

The girl’s smile curls up in amusement, “Am I new? Is that what you just asked?”

“Wait.” Gura waves her hand, flustered, “I’m sorry, hello? This is my first time talking to a human.” 

“Oh, well,” Surface girl waves her hand shyly, “I’m Ame. Nice to meet you.” 

“Ame.” Gura tests the name. Her accent does something funny on the mei part. She opens her mouth to say it again, to get it right, but the girl is looking at her. Her cheeks are rosy. 

Gura manages out, “I’m Gura.” 

“Gura,” Ame says, but it sounds more like she’s saying gouda. Gura perks up. She’d never heard anyone pronounce her name like that. She liked it. She wants to speak more, but her shoulders are jostled as her friends find the bravery to join her. 

“Are you real?” Hammerhead squeaks, her voice half muffled by the water. 

Ame is grinning at the sharks, “Yeah, I’m real.” She playfully kicks water at them. Gura blinks but doesn’t flinch. The other sharks had ducked low. It makes her smile, finding amusement in the human’s antics. 

“Can you fly? How’d you get on that rock?” 

“That’s a world-class secret.” Ame sniffs. “You’ll have to bribe me.” 

“Bribe you?” One yelps, “What does a human want?” 

“Something veeeery specific.” Ame winks at them. “But I’m not gonna tell you! You’re gonna have to figure that out.” 

Gura feels her excitement mirrored in the other sharks. They’re nudging each other, whispering questions, and giggling.

“Are you a harpy?” One asks. 

“What?” Ame reels, her smile growing sharp, “No! I’m not! I’m a human, what, are you calling me a harpy? For real?” 

“Oh, that’s a human insult.” One of her friend's notes. 

Gura can't help but giggle, ducking her head low when the human looks at her. It makes Gura afraid to do anything. The human seems aware of what she’s doing at all times. It makes her anxious, in a tummy-tightening delightful kinda way. She can’t even begin to figure it out. 

“I’ll tell ya what.” Ame says after her friends tried a bunch of different questions ranging from are you a crab to do you eat fish sticks, “Every day you guys get to send one of you up here, how about that? And you only get to ask me five questions.” 

“Like a genie?” 

“Uh, sure.” Ame laughs. “It’s like a game. You guys like games, right?” 

There’s a murmur of agreement. Gura fights down the part of her that really hopes she’s chosen to go up first. An agreement is made. One shark, five questions. Anything more and the human promised she wouldn’t even be on the rock anymore. 

“And poof.” Ame pantomimes an explosion. “I’ll be gone.” 

“We won’t do that,” Gura says, surprising herself by speaking up. Her friends are nodding though and she tacks on confidently, “We’ll have you figured out in no time.” 

Ame’s grin is smug, but it’s glittering and warm and lighting off fireworks in Gura’s head, “I’m counting on it.” 

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Gura’s earlier indifference is costing her now. 

Her friends go first and reserve her for last. She tries to appear unbothered by it, but there are three sharks and that’s three days she has to wait before it’s her turn to go up and see the surface girl. The only consolidation is that the other sharks have to wait too. They end up converging into Gura’s home, huddling low to the sandbed floor and gossiping about what they’ve learned. 

“She can’t sing.” One says. 

Another rebukes, “She can. You haven’t heard her.” 

“She said she can’t sing! She said!” 

“Okay, but did you ask her to sing?” 

They mutter, “No.” 

I’ll ask her to sing. Gura thinks. A part of her hopes no one else does. She’s trying to think of viable questions to ask. Everything she thinks of, she finds out it's already been asked. She learns about this knowledge through her friends, her tail swishing behind her with thinly veiled agitation. 

I wanted to ask that. She doesn’t say. 

Suddenly, impatience wasn’t what was driving her. As the days narrowed down, she frantically made a list of everything she could ask. They had to be good questions. Something that’d prolong her stay, something she can wear as a badge of honor to take back to her friends. She can brag all about the information she fished up that they couldn’t. That was the dream, anyway. 

Her day arrives. 

She’s a shy presence beneath the waves. The girl is there. It quells the small part of her afraid of finding the rock empty. She doesn’t want to make the awkward, embarrassing journey back down with nothing to show for it. 

When she pokes her head up, Ame is already saying, “Hi Gura.”

“Hi,” Gura says. The list of questions in her head starts to dissipate. She’s left hovering with just her nose above the water, anxious, too much in her head to speak. Ame doesn’t seem to mind. She’s smiling at Gura, kicking her feet to the waves exactly as she’d been found before. 

“Got any questions for me?”

“Ah, yeah.” Gura mumbles. She tries to focus one down in her head and blurts out, “Do you have any friends?”

Ame blinks at her. Her smile swims and she says, “I have loads of friends. You wouldn’t know ‘em- well, actually, ” She leans forward slyly, “There’s one you might know.”

Gura raises her eyebrows. Ame is leaning back on her palms, a smug cadence to her that makes Gura feel like she missed a joke. When her answer isn’t immediately presented to her, Gura asks, “Yeah? Who are they?”

“Who’s what?” Ame counters. 

Gura frowns, “Who’s the friend you know?” 

“That I know?” Ame hums, “I know lots of people. You’re gonna have to be more specific.” 

Gura feels her tail lash. This human was intentionally vague. It needled at her skin. Not only was Ame avoiding answers, but she was also dropping fish hooks where no bait was to be found. 

“You said I might know one of your friends.” Gura hedges. 

“You know them,” Ame confirms, but remains infuriatingly silent on the matter. 

Gura’s earlier wonder is dimming, “... You’re not gonna say.” 

“It makes things too easy!” Ame complains, kicking her feet and sending water over Gura's head. “C’mon, ask me something funny.” 

“What?” Gura flounders, grasping desperately for something, and blurting out, “Can you sing for me?” 

Ame snorts. She looks heartily amused as she says, “Good one.”

Gura stares. 

Ame stares back. 

“Wait,” Ame says, “That was real?” 

“No,” Gura says. She’s backtracking. Her neck was starting to burn. Ame was looking at her with wide eyes, her mouth parted in a half smile. The hint of teeth is sending Gura’s brain into overdrive. “I asked- I was saying-”

“Well,” Ame says quietly, poking her heels together, “I’m flattered, I guess. Maybe I’ll sing for you sometime.” 

Gura stops. Her heart skips. She breathes out, “Later? Why later?” 

Ame barks a laugh, quickly turning to hide it into her shoulder, “Don’t pressure me! I need to get in the mood to do that, ya know? I’ll be ready some other time.” 

“Okay.” Gura agrees. It felt too hasty so she tries to tack on, “That’s fine.” It sounds awkward to her ears. She winces. Despite this, Ame is peaking at her through her bangs, shy fondness written across her expression.


“Got any more questions for me?” Ame prods. 

Gura purses her lips. She does, she has plenty. Hesitantly, she’s moving over to the rock. It’s closer. She’s expecting some kind of reaction from the surface girl. A flinch. Maybe she’d lift her legs out of the water. Something that spelled fear. 

Instead, Ame is patting the spot next to her, “Wanna come up?” 

“No,” Gura says, her heart screaming wildly at the idea. “No, um, I wanted to ask if you’re lonely.” 

Ame tilts her head, “Do I look lonely?” 

“You’re only ever on this rock. I dunno. Do you live here?”

“I don’t,” Ame says amusedly. “And I think that was five questions, maybe. I might have given you a freebie.” 

Gura scowls, “There’s no way that was-”

“Someone’s a sore loser.” Ame grins. She’s reaching out with her hand. Gura feels frozen, her breath caught in her lungs as Ame pokes her finger against her nose. “I gave you extra attention. Aren’t you so lucky?” 

I’m being toyed with. Gura knows, but at the same time, she’s melting and burning and reviving into a tomato. She lowers herself down to the water, away from sly hands. Ame watches her go with glimmering eyes. 

“Leaving already?”

Gura gives an affirmative noise from her throat. Words weren’t coming to her anymore and she’d rather get away with this without digging a deeper grave. Ame brushes her hair behind her ear. The saltwater that clings to her makes her pretty in an indescribable way. Sunlight reflecting off of ocean waves turns this into a whimsical meeting. 

“I’ll see you in a few days, right?” Ame smiles. “See you then, Gura.” 

“See you.” Gura whispers, dazed as she sinks back down, her gaze constantly snapping back up to watch the legs of the human merrily kick at the water. She does this well until the rock is out of sight. 

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Thankfully, Gura wasn’t the only one not getting answers. 

Her friends complain about the surface girl. Gura listens with half an ear. One of them is dropping out, citing it’s not fun if the human isn’t gonna play along. It’s not much of a mystery if it doesn’t want to be solved. 

“It’s not fun anymore.” They said. “Besides, it’s probably some mage messing with us. They probably teleported to that rock!” 

There’s a murmur of agreement. Gura wonders about that. When her day swings back around, she’s a little more confident in her scales. Her questions weren’t so bland to ask where the human had come from. She wasn’t really interested in that anymore. It was a mystery, but her heart was leading her in another direction. 

“Good morning.” Ame chirps when she surfaces. “Did you sleep well?”

Gura smiles demurely, “I did. How was sleeping on this rock?”

“Is that really your first question?” Ame grins, that slyness returning to her. She gives a dramatic stretch. Her shirt rides up a bit as she does. Gura keeps her eyes trained on Ame’s face. The blonde is saying, “Oh yeah, I slept great. Broke my ribs laying on my side.”

The lie was too obvious. Gura can appreciate the humor at least. She’s opening her mouth to ask another question but Ame beats her to it. 

“Do you sleep on your side?”

“Uh,” Gura wasn’t expecting herself to be questioned. It makes her tummy warm from the attention. Does she ask the other sharks questions too? “No, I lay on my belly.” 

“Do you loaf like a cat?”

“What?” Gura blinks owlishly. 

Ame tosses her head back with a sigh, “Ah, you’ll understand in the future, I guess.” 

The future. Gura’s tail wags. The human would be staying. She hadn’t realized that was something she was worried about until relief was sinking into her shoulders. She edges closer to the rock. As before, Ame is patting the spot next to her amiably. 

“Wanna come up?”

“No,” Gura says, instead opting to fold her arms onto the rock to keep herself grounded. She peeks up through her bangs. This was a close angle. Way close. She’s inches from Ame’s thigh. “Do you get sick often?”

Ame blinks, “Sick? Why would I get sick?”

“You’re always here on the water. Humans are fragile.”

“Hey,” Ame says, her smile crooked. “Are you callin’ me weak?” 

Gura hides a smile in her arms. The banter felt nice. She banters with her friends all the time. This felt different. There was something fluffier in their words. 

“Well?” Gura prods. 

Ame turns her nose up into the air, “I’m perfectly healthy.” 

“Okay,” Gura says. She hasn’t seen anything to prove her otherwise. The human was always right here on this rock, unbothered and cheery. She forges on, “Do you wait long?” 

“Wait?” Ame echoes. There’s a knowing glimmer in her eye, “What do you mean? I live here.”

“We both know you don’t,” Gura says flatly. 

Playfully, Ame is kicking her leg at her. Droplets of water land on Gura’s cheek. She rubs her arm over her face, squinting at the blonde. She looks too smug for Gura’s liking. She retaliates by lifting her tail out of the water. It’s a little funny to see Ame’s smile drop in an instant. 

“Oh no.” She says, right before Gura’s tail comes down on the water and douses her. There’s a muffled shriek, her voice climbing four times higher. Gura wasn’t expecting that. She laughs, hiding behind her arms when Ame turns a pointedly look her way. She’s dripping water from her hair. It’s running down her nose and over her freckles. Gura is completely mesmerized. 

“Okay, wise guy.” Ame huffs. “You’re right. I don’t live here.” Her voice lifts pompously, “I’m a special kinda traveler, you see. One of a kind.” 

Gura mulls that over. She says out loud, “You’re not a sailor.” 

“Nope,” Ame says. 

“You’re not a harpy.”

“No- Hey!” 

“So,” Gura drawls, “What are you?” 

“I’m Ame.” The girl boasts. “Amelia Watson, at your service.” 

Gura makes a face at that. It wasn’t what she wanted, but a full name was having her complaints shoved far down her throat. Amelia. It’s cute. Not only that, but she gave a family name. If Atlantis knows anything about her, she’d be able to find out that way. 

The new direction distracts her thoughts. Ame is saying, “Is that all your questions?”

“Uh,” Gura startles. She doesn’t want their time together to end so soon. She blurts out, “What’s your favorite food?” 

Amelia blinks at her. Her lips are twitching up as she says, “My favorite? Hmm…” She closes her eyes and tilts her head, “That’s a tough one! It’s hard to pick from so many. Noodles, cake, I like lots of things.”

“Can you pick one?”

“Why?” 

Gura scowls at her. Amelia grins, “Okay, I’ll pick one. You ready?” 

For what? Gura wants to ask, but she doesn’t get to. The human is leaning down. Her brain screeches to a halt. Her heart freezes in her chest. She’s turned to stone by this simple action. Amelia’s face is inches away from hers. She can see the blue of her eyes. There’s a ring of fairy pink that lifts Gura off the planet and places her in the stars. 

“Uh.” Gura stammers. 

“I like the taste of fish,” Amelia says, like it’s a secret, like it’s an inside joke. She looks like she’s trying not to laugh. Gura knows she’s being teased, but the context of it is leaving her head in smoke. 

She bleats out, “No more questions! None, I’m good, have a- have a good rock! A good one! Yup! Bye!” 

She hears a giggle in her ears. It’s a quiet thing. Gura assumes it’s quiet because she’s diving down into the ocean to hold onto the last vestiges of her dignity. She also likes to think it’s shy and that Amelia was just as embarrassed about that as her. 

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There is no cake in Atlantis. 

Gura frustrates over this. Her time is shortened as another of her friends drops out. It’s just her and hammerhead now that go up to ask questions. The other two hound their way into her kitchen when they can to gossip about any information they’ve been given. It’s little. 

“She doesn’t talk,” Hammerhead complains. “She said she likes the color green, I guess.”

Gura stores that away. No one else looks like they care. 

“What about you, Gura?” Her friends ask, “What’d you learn?”

She likes the taste of fish, she doesn’t say. Her words stammer, “Uh, not much. She did say she doesn’t live on that rock. She was being vague.” 

“Well, we knew that. ” 

“Boring.” 

With the attention off her, Gura looks through her cupboards. Oyster shells and halibut tails, broth condensed into baubles and fish bone forks. Would that impress a human? Gura commiserates over her options. 

None of it is cake. 

She asks her neighbors if they have an idea what cake is and receives confused looks. She doesn’t have the time for deep research. She makes a brief visit to a local cafe, but they serve kebabs of lobster and smoked salmon. Cake gives her raised eyebrows. She can’t describe it because she doesn’t even know how to. 

When she surfaces, it’s with a hesitant, “Can you describe what cake is?”

Amelia stares at her. Her expression is softening, “Oh yeah, it’s super tasty. You’d love it.” 

Gura folds her arms onto the rock and listens. Amelia tells her about human recipes. She lets slip odd words Gura hasn’t ever heard before. She seems to lose herself in her tangent, forgetting she’s on a rock and forgetting she’s talking to Gura. She kicks her feet, happiness in the way she swings her hands around to emphasize just how big a cake could get. 

“Woah.” Gura breathes. 

Amelia grins, “Yeah. Maybe I’ll bring you some next time.” 

“How?” Gura raises her eyebrows at her, “Gonna float off your rock?” 

“Hey, hey.” Amelia says cheekily, “My secret.” 

“Hm.” Gura rests her chin on her knuckles. “You said you’re a traveler.” 

“One of a kind.” 

Gura throws out a wild guess, “You’re a demigod.” 

Amelia barks a laugh. She muffles it behind her hand, her eyes curving upwards with mirth. Gura says flatly, “That’s a no.”

“That’s so funny,” Amelia says. 

“Shut up. Are you really human?”

“Oh, one hundred percent.” Amelia hums. She’s flexing one of her arms. Gura blinks, not expecting to see a hint of bicep underneath that shirt. Amelia was dainty looking, but with her arm raised like that, Gura felt the absurd urge to reach out and touch her arm. She keeps her hands firmly on the rock. 

“See this?” Amelia boasts. “That’s allll human. I could lift you up.” 

“Really?” Gura says disbelievingly. 

Amelia’s grin grows sharp. Gura loses her bravado because she really doesn’t want to find out if this human could lift her. That’s a lot of skin contact. Amelia would be touching her. Just thinking about it makes it feel like she’s rocketing into the sun. 

“Okay.” Gura agrees, just to get rid of the challenge in Amelia’s eyes. “You’re a human traveler and you’re looking for something.” 

“Yup.” Amelia pops her lips. “Got any guesses what that might be yet? I’ve answered tons of questions, you know.” 

“Sure you have,” Gura mutters. She gets splashed for that. She wipes the water out of her eyelashes and asks, “Where have you been if you’re such a great traveler?” 

Amelia leans back on her palms. She looks disinterested now as she says, “Here and there. I’m all over. I’ve been forwards and back, mostly back as of recently. I really like going back. It’s fun.” 

Gura scowls, “Yeah, okay. Anything concrete you wanna give me?”

“I’ve never been to Atlantis.” Amelia offers. 

That stumps Gura. Amelia felt so ephemeral that the idea that she couldn’t go to Atlantis felt unreal. Some sort of magic must have gotten her here and that same magic could easily get her to Atlantis, right? Then again, she’s human. No human can breathe long enough to enjoy Atlantis, let alone withstand the crushing depths. The sapphire gem of the sea was out of man’s reach. 

Amelia smiles at her, a dim thing that looks far away, “I’ve always wanted to see it.” 

“Oh.” Gura breathes. “Sorry.” 

“It’s okay.” Amelia shyly averts her gaze down to her knees, “I can hear stories about it. I know more about it than anyone does nowadays.” 

Gura doesn’t want to leave it at that. Amelia doesn’t look extremely bothered by the idea of never setting foot in Atlantis, but the quiet sadness of her expression roots itself into Gura’s bones. I want her to see my city. Gura pictures it in her head. She’d be leading Amelia by her hand, careful with her, telling her all about the sights. Amelia’s eyes would be wider than moons, her mouth parted in awe, and the whole city reflecting wonder and adoration back to her. The blue of her eyes would be a candle in a bonfire. 

Gura startles by how badly she wants that. 

“Maybe,” Gura hedges awkwardly, “You can see it.” 

Amelia looks at her. There’s an indulging smile on her face. It doesn’t look right, “Sure. Got a miracle up your sleeve?”

“I’ll think of something,” Gura mutters. There was always something absurdly magical hiding down in Atlantis. She just had to find it. She’s more focused on Amelia and the doubt that’s hanging off her shoulders. “Would you go down with me?” 

“To Atlantis?” Amelia asks. She tilts her head, her gaze sliding off to the horizon, “...I think you’re outa questions, buckaroo.” 

Gura flinches. She says, “Ah, um, wait-” 

“It’s okay.” Amelia brushes her hair behind her ear, “It’s kinda scary for me to go down that far, ya know?” 

“Oh.” Gura blinks. It didn’t feel like the real answer. Nothing ever did when it came to Amelia. She says slowly, “Sure. Yeah. Whenever you feel up to it.” 

Amelia smiles, “Thanks, Gura.” 

The smile, her name- Gura lets herself forget about visits to Atlantis. She’s out of questions, but she lingers, just for a minute longer. She spoils herself with Amelia and her humming. It’s not singing, but Gura finds she likes it anyway. 

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A gift will do. 

What represents Atlantis best? Gura cringes on her own behalf. She slept through most of her lessons as a kid and anything ancient and powerful in her city she hasn’t a clue why it’s there or its history. Amelia may not be able to go to Atlantis, but Gura may be able to bring it to her instead. A fragment of Atlantis may be worth something. 

But what? 

“I don’t know why you want to,” Hammerhead mumbles, her unwilling shopping partner for the day, “But if you think bribing her will really work, maybe some gems?” 

“Gems.” Gura echoes. She ignores the bribing part. It hadn’t even occurred to her that would be a plan. She just wanted to show Amelia something nice. “Uh, yeah, maybe that’s why she’s here too.” 

“She’s not a pirate,” Hammerhead says. “I already asked that.” 

“Yeah, I know.” 

They scour the markets. There are different foods she could bring her, but Gura hesitates over them. Humans can’t eat raw foods, can’t they? She needed to ask what kinda fish Amelia likes and- she won’t think about her lips while she does, she will not- and hopefully, she’ll be able to bring it to her. That’d ruin the surprise though. Gura frowns over this. She wanted Amelia to be surprised. It doesn't feel like a lot could get past her. It'd be a triumph in front of every vague answer she likes to present. 

Gems? No- but would she? Did she seem like the type to enjoy jewelry? Gura hadn’t seen anything on her person. No necklace or shiny earrings. Would she like them anyway? 

“Something related to Atlantis,” Gura mutters. “Something she’d like.” 

“We barely know her,” Hammerhead says. 

Gura deflates at that. She doesn’t know Amelia and that’s grating upon her skin. She wants to know more. The blonde is frustratingly vague. What could make her happy? 

Gura takes a risk. 

When she reaches the surface, she’s a little late. She knows this. Her tummy is turning and her skin feels hot. She’s empty-handed but her chest is full of emotion. Amelia stares at her as she lingers just above the water. 

“Uh, hi,” Amelia says. She’s offering a half smile. “Got held up?” 

“A lil bit,” Gura mutters. “I was, uh, thinking about what you said last time. About wanting to see Atlantis.”

Amelia doesn’t outwardly react to that, “Ah.” 

“... I can’t show you Atlantis.” Gura admits softly, “But would you like to hear it?” 

Amelia perks up. She’s leaning forward, her lips curling up into a giddy smile, “Hear what?” 

“A song,” Gura admits shyly. 

“You’ll sing for me?” Amelia covers her mouth with her hand. “I wasn’t expecting that.” 

Gura panics and starts to ramble, “If you don’t want to, that’s fair, I was just- it felt like something I could give- do you want gems? I could get a lobster kebab. I think you’d hate it- maybe you won’t! Unless you like my singing.” Gura covers her face with her hands, “Uh, maybe I should just start asking questions-”

“I like your singing,” Amelia says. She looks flustered as well, her hands fluttering as she adds, “I’d like your singing! I’d like to hear it. I’d like it. It’s fine.” 

Gura tries not to melt back into the water, “Okay. You, uh, may not get it. It’s Greek.” 

“Yeah.” Amelia grins at her. “I still wanna hear it.” 

That’s not helping. Gura’s face feels like lava. She breathes shakily. Her hands find the flat surface of the rock. It’s a good way to steady herself. She’s not able to meet Amelia’s eyes. It felt too personal. Her heart wouldn’t be able to take it. 

It’s a shanty she starts off with, a whimsical thing that tells the story of a traveler that couldn’t stop holes from forming in his boat. It’s a jaunty tune. She tries to keep it cheery and bright, but she risks a glance up to see how her audience is receiving it and- Amelia is smiling. Her eyes are half-lidded and she’s tilting her head from side to side. She’s enjoying it. There’s a tenderness written across her expression. Gura hadn’t seen it there before. It was startling. Her words stumbled and her song ends up floaty and quieter than it’s supposed to. 

The world didn’t have to hear it. The ocean neither. It was a song just for Amelia. With how quietly she utters it, with how Amelia leans closer to hear, Gura feels like she’s cupping a treasure in her hands. Her breath shakes as she changes songs. Amelia listens. Gura sings. 

It becomes the longest Gura’s ever stayed. An hour drags on, laughter mingled with songs. She feels invulnerable. She’s sung before, but something about this made her tummy tight and her heart beat fiercely. There are feathers in her head. With every round of applause Amelia gives her, Gura feels like she could fly. 

She asks, “Do you have a song?” 

“Me?” Amelia belts out, “No way, I like listening to you.” 

“I want to hear you.” 

“Nah,” Amelia says. 

Gura lowers her head to catch her eye. She’s feeling bolder. Amelia glances away, embarrassed. Gura says, “Please?” 

“Oh c’mon,” Amelia complains. “I’m gonna sing something cheesy, like a nursery rhyme.” 

“That’s fine,” Gura says. “I just wanna hear you sing.”

Amelia practically glows. She stumbles at first, awkward words trying to find their footsteps. The melody trips out of the gate, but the music has a grip on her. Amelia sways to her song and jumps her voice between octaves at her whim. She’s fun, Gura realizes, it’s not about beauty and grace. She’s excitement and laughter. It makes Gura smile so wide it hurts. 

“That was great,” Gura says. “Encore?”

Amelia is red-cheeked and breathless. There’s a wild look in her eye as she says, “I’ve got a better idea. I’m about to rickroll you.” 

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Gura was floating. 

She swims with half her mind in her head. The other half is leagues above up at the surface. It’s orbiting around a rock and the human that sits there. She daydreams. She sighs. She only has to wait a day before she gets to go back up again. Her friends don’t ask about the human much anymore. They’ve lost interest. 

“There’s actually been weird stuff happening.” They gossip. Gura can hear them at her table giggling with each other. She's fixing herself up some soup, the iron kiln magically fastening the liquid into a bubble. She’s looking for her fishbone straw while she listens. “The palace has been so active lately.”

“Is it because of all the people going missing?” One asks. “They said they’re going missing. I dunno. Do you believe it?” 

“Why wouldn’t I? Don’t drop conspiracy theories.” 

“I heard we’re getting a curfew.” 

Gura frowns. A curfew meant she’d have a limited time frame to go see Amelia. She didn’t like that. She wasn’t bold enough to sneak out, but something in her chest yearned for her to do it anyway. 

“Doubt that. Trade would get all kinds of messed up, wouldn’t it?” 

“I dunno.” She can hear the chatter grow quiet. “Have you heard from Hreavsilgar?” 

“I have a cousin that lives there. I haven’t heard from them in weeks.” 

Gura tunes them out. It occurs to her that while Amelia may have some super secretive magic that gets her to that rock every day, Gura hasn’t had a chance to show off what she’s capable of. She cups the bauble of soup she’s made thoughtfully. This was made by Atlantis ingenuity and if asked, she wouldn’t be able to explain. She could show it off, sure, but she’d be stumped by the first question Amelia would throw her way. 

In the end, she brings her trident. It’s the ocean’s rage coalesced into a sleek weapon. She lets Amelia hold it. Gura isn’t concerned. She can un-summon it at will. She watches Amelia awe over it, a lot of her ohs and ahs are more dramatic instead of actually surprised. 

It’s almost like you’ve seen it before. Gura muses. 

Amelia twirls the weapon in her hands and swears when it clanks against the rock, “Shit, will that scratch?”

“Can you scratch water?’ Gura asks rhetorically. 

Amelia shoots her a look. She’s handing back the trident. When Gura takes it from her, for a brief moment, their fingers touch. Gura feels the hair on her neck standing up as she lets the trident melt back into the waves. It frees her hands up to lay them flat against the rock. 

Amelia leans back on her palms with a sigh, “Well? Got any questions?”

“Do you,” Gura hedges softly, “um…like hanging out?” 

Amelia blinks at her. There’s bewilderment across her expression. It’s softening as she says, “Yeah, I do.” 

Gura’s heart stutters. She can hear it weeping for joy. She keeps her expression schooled as she asks, “Will you ever disappear one day?” 

“Like how?” Amelia asks. “Like poof, I’m gone?”

“Gone.” Gura echoes. “Um, like, one day I’ll come up to see you and you won’t be here.”

“Oh, well.” Amelia sheepishly scratches the back of her head. Gura perks up as she spots a dusting of pink over her cheeks. “Your friends have been bailing. I kinda just figured at some point you’d bail too.”

“I like talking to you,” Gura says. 

Amelia cracks a wry smile at that, “More than talking to your friends?”

Gura doesn’t even have to think. For the last few weeks, her mind had been rewired with nothing else to focus on but blonde hair and blue eyes. She can barely remember what her day-to-day activity was before Amelia had come along. 

“I hang out with them,” Gura says. She looks down at the rock. When she speaks personally, she feels too shy to meet Amelia’s gaze. “But they chat a bunch about stuff I’m not interested in. I like talking with you. My friends are nice, but… I’d rather be here with you.” 

“Oh.” Amelia breathes. She’s shifting in her spot, her hands digesting in her lap. Gura dares to glance up through her bangs. There’s a cherry-red blush across Amelia’s face. “I wasn’t expecting that.” 

“Was that too real?” Gura squeaks. 

“No, it’s okay,” Amelia says. That nervous habit of brushing her hair behind her ear shows. “Sorry if I worried you. I’ll be here.”

“Really?” Gura prods. She’s leaning her chin onto her arms. “Got places to be, people to see?”

“I do that when I’m not here.”

“Aha,” Gura smirks. “So you aren’t on this rock all the time.” 

Amelia tosses her arms in the air, “Sue me for not wanting to pee in the ocean.”

Gura snorts. Her chest feels fluffy. Amelia is staying. She can feel her tail wagging beneath the water. Amelia is smiling too, a lazy thing, comfortable, free. Gura wanted more of it. Tentatively, she’s gripping the rock. She leverages her weight against her arms and hoists herself out of the water. She’s too aware of how little space there is on this rock. Amelia’s close. An inch separates them as Gura settles down onto the rock, her tail hanging off the side and dipping into the waves. 

She can see Amelia smiling in the corner of her eye, “Hey.” 

“Hi,” Gura whispers. “Thought it might be awkward to talk down to me all the time.” 

“I do like this better,” Amelia murmurs and gives her a little nudge with her shoulder. Gura’s arm burns from the contact. She tries not to focus on it too much. 

“You’re here for something.” Gura prompts. Anything to distract from how close they are together. It works. Amelia hums and kicks her feet, her focus moving away from Gura and off onto the waves below. 

“Yeah, I’m still looking. Figured out what it might be?” 

“Still looking.” Gura answers. 

They sit in comfortable quiet together. It’s nice, Gura realizes, to know that questions aren’t the only thing binding them together here. She doesn’t know how to pick apart the emotions swirling in her chest. All she knows is she likes it. She likes it enough to stay like that for as long as she can. 

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Curfew was instated. 

Gura wasn’t ultimately worried about it. It didn’t hamper her time with Amelia at all since she always went up to see her during the day. Her life didn’t change in the slightest. Her friends complained about not being able to enjoy the city late at night anymore, but life swam on. 

“Aren’t you scared?” Amelia asks. She looked fascinated ever since Gura had brought it up. “You said there are disappearances.” 

“Well.” Gura sniffs. “I think that’s just a rumor.” 

“Hm.” Amelia leans back on her hands. She’s scrutinizing Gura as she asks, “Have you ever thought about moving from Atlantis?”

It’d never even crossed her mind. There was pride in her home. It was the brightest gem of the sea. It was her blood. Other places weren’t so bad, but they weren’t as brag-worthy as Atlantis was. 

“Nah,” Gura says. “There are a few nearby towns I’ve been to. Nothing interesting.” 

“Ah. Nothing recent?”

“Can’t say.” Gura rubs her arm sheepishly. “Haven’t been paying attention to that.” Too busy paying attention to you, she doesn’t say. There are a lot of things that fell on the back burner in her mind when it came to Amelia. 

Amelia pops her lips, “Well. As long as you’re safe.”

Gura’s chest feels warm, “Yeah, of course.” She playfully bares her teeth. “I’d like to see something try and get me.” 

They converse at Amelia’s rock. Gura almost forgets to ask her usual questions. In the end, she lets it go. She doesn’t need to know everything about Amelia. It’s not something she’s giving up on, but it is something she wants to come naturally to her. She doesn’t want to force it. She’s too aware of what she says, where her arms are, and what she’s doing. She doesn’t want to spook Amelia away. 

“There’s not a whole lot to do on your rock.” Gura points out. 

Amelia looks amused, “Already running out of stuff to talk about?”

“Well, no, but-” Gura huffs, “C’mon. What games do you even play?” 

“Oblivion.” 

“... What?” 

Amelia hides her giggles behind her hand, “Don’t worry about it. You’ll understand later.” 

Gura tilts her head. The phrasing of that was drawing her attention. Amelia is asking her a question. It’s drawing her away from it, but it lingers. Later, Amelia said. It didn’t sound like something she’d explain later. It felt like she knew what’d happen later. The intent in her voice was hard to piece apart. 

Gura figures she’s overthinking it. 

“We could stargaze.” Gura says, before she immediately says, “Crap. Nevermind.” 

“What?” Amelia blinks, “Is this about the curfew?”

“Yeah.”

“Wait-” Amelia belts out a laugh, “Wait- did you seriously suggest stargazing? Really?”

Gura feels her face burn. She’s lowering herself down into the water. Embarrassment chases her. It’s not quick enough to escape Amelia’s hand that latches onto her arm. Gura goes rigid with surprise. Amelia looks startled as well. 

“Ah, um,” Amelia stutters, “No, it’s not bad- it was just cute. I wasn’t expecting it.” She laughs weakly, “I’m used to…other suggestions.” 

“Oh,” Gura says meekly. She hasn’t a clue what Amelia’s talking about. The blonde looks happy. Cautiously, Gura allows herself to be drawn back to the surface. Amelia’s grip on her loosens until she’s just touching Gura’s arm, her fingertips leaving motes of fire where she rests them. Gura tries to ignore it. “Again, I can’t break curfew.” 

“You could,” Amelia says. She’s wiggling her eyebrows. 

Gura smiles flatly, “I don’t have fancy teleporting magic like you.” 

“It’s not teleportation.” 

“Whatever. Court jester magic. Same thing.” 

“Hey!”

Gura snickers. The idea of breaking curfew is left behind, but it doesn’t leave her completely. She thinks about it. No plans have been made. She knows Amelia won’t be there, but she was going to be. Gura could impress her. 

She makes an Atlantean dish. The nighttime blues bleed in through her window as she cooks. Spotted halibut and rock cod pie all bubbled together. She agonizes over whether or not Amelia even likes seafood. She ends up grabbing an assortment of fruit to go with it. 

Curfew meant guards. She didn’t want to be caught and escorted home. She waits. Large, oval baubles of light hang over the city. They move in clockwork. At certain times of the hour, her neighborhood gets doused with darkness. It’s only for a minute, but it’s a minute she uses to escape with. She flees to the surface, exhilaration running tight in her chest. 

Amelia is there. 

Gura startles. In the darkness of the ocean, she wasn’t expecting to see anyone on the rock. Amelia looks different without the sun. Moonlight turns the mystery of her into something electric. Her eyes are neon blue. 

“Hey.” Amelia greets, smiling crookedly. “Surprised?”

Gura whispers, “You’re here.” 

“You said you wanted to go stargazing.”

“How…” Gura shakes her head, “No, that’s not right. How’d you know I’d be here?”

“Gut instinct.” 

Another vague answer. It’s the first one that frustrates Gura. She floats there, her hands occupied with a warm bubble of food and her thoughts wild. The smugness of Amelia’s smile fades. 

“Sorry.” The blonde murmurs. “I just wanted to see you. Do I have to explain that?” 

Gura inhales shakily, “Uh, I don’t know.” 

“Neither do I,” Amelia admits shyly. 

It makes Gura feel a little better that she’s not the only one unsure about this. They’re an awkward duo. The girl who says too little and the girl who wants too much. Gura nervously offers her gift. 

Amelia beams at her, “For me?”

“It was supposed to be a surprise.” Gura mumbles. “I was gonna leave it on this rock.”

“And let the ocean wash it away?” 

Ah, she hadn’t thought about that. She winces. Amelia is laughing as she takes a bite. She knocks her knees together with a happy tune in her throat. Encouraged, Gura hoists herself up onto the rock. Their hips are touching. If Gura leans just a hairline to the side, their thighs would be touching as well. The proximity is doing something to her head. 

“Thank you,” Amelia says. Her eyes are glittering warmly as she spears some fish onto her fork. “I like this dish.”

“You’re welcome,” Gura says. She can feel her tail wagging. A part of her holds on to that- I like this dish- and welcomes that praise. Another part of her turns that upside down and wonders, you sound like you’ve had it before. 

Amelia has a starlit sky at her side. She’s focused on her food and throwing out random compliments, little words that burn in Gura’s tummy. Gura leans her arms on her knees. She watches through her bangs as moonlight and bright blue eyes reflect back to her. It settles in then. It’s a realization she’d been stepping towards but hadn’t indulged. 

I like you. 

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They had more time to meet. 

Now, it wasn’t just during the day. It wasn’t just sunkissed skin and freckles. Now it was moon-touched lips that curl and eyes neon bright before a backdrop of stars. Now, Gura breathes, now she’s falling. She’s never experienced the sensation. Not in the ocean. Gravity is throwing her up above the clouds and far past planet Earth. 

She’s falling and she never wants to stop. 

It’s scary. It’s exhilarating. Amelia catches her eye and her grin grows sharper, knowing. Gura chases after her mystery. There’s a thrill to it. They toe a line. Gura doesn’t act on it. Amelia waits and watches. 

It didn’t matter to her about curfew. After the first few times she escaped without issue, she found the delinquency fun. Her friends didn’t know. No one knew. It was just her and Amelia and thousands of stars. 

Amelia points to them, their shoulders brushing, “Those two are connected, they form the arm, and the rest of the body is kneeling, do you see? It’s supposed to look like it’s holding a bow but-”

Gura isn’t looking at the stars. The waves lap up to her knees and her tail keeps getting pushed around, but that’s hardly a distraction. It’s the way saltwater drips from Amelia’s arms. It’s the faintest sheen of water in her eyelashes. It’s the way she smiles between her words, a small laugh here and there, her explanation reaching out and beyond. The stars are her audience. Gura lets all that information fly right over her. 

It’s fascinating, she thinks, how just the noise of someone is enticing. It’s not just Amelia’s voice. It’s the way she moves. The sound of her nails tapping against the rock. The noise she makes when she exhales. When she tangents her words get choppy and broken up with hiccups and coughs. It’s not perfection. She’s a vial of sand, a broken cork holding it together, and the glass case stained with colors and affections. 

Gura fidgets. Her knees knock against Amelia’s. Her tangent goes abruptly quiet. 

“Sorry,” Gura says. 

“It’s okay.” Amelia’s response is nearly immediate. She’s bobbing her leg a little. “It’s probably not up your alley.”

It’s what you like, Gura thinks, I’ll like it too.

“It’s fine.” Gura murmurs. “I like listening.” 

Amelia glances at her. Her expression is indescribable as she leans back. She’s laying down on the rock. Gura feels like she’s tethered as she falls back as well. She can barely even blink. Her cheek is flat against the rock. She can feel where she’s being touched. Their shoulders. Their hips, just barely. 

“Are you,” Gura stutters, “Are you gonna keep talking?”

“Do you want me to?” Amelia asks. There isn’t disinterest in her tone. She sounds sleepy, a cat curled up in its favorite spot. She’d keep talking if Gura asked. Gura exhales, the levity of that weighing her down. She goes slack against the rock. 

Amelia lifts her hand. It’s just barely there, but she tucks it back to her side in a casual manner. There’d been intent there. Gura feels her heart lurch. She’s filled with ideas of Amelia reaching across the distance between them. She’d touch Gura’s shoulder. She’d cup her cheek. She’d touch her lips. 

Gura exhales shakily. Slowly, she uncurls her hand from her side. She’s a tentative wave crawling up a shore. Her pinky touches Amelia’s wrist. She watches. Amelia’s expression is open, nonjudgemental, and waiting. 

Her hands feel too calloused. When she twines her fingers with Amelia’s, she’s aware of how different it feels. She’s held hands with friends before. They were all Atlanteans. Amelia was human and her hands are small. They fit hers nicely. 

Gura’s face burns. 

Amelia is turning her nose to the rock, tucking her chin close to her shoulder. She looks shy. She’s not saying anything, but the way her hand tightens around Gura’s feels like lightning down her spine. 

“I’d, uh,” Gura fumbles for anything to say, “I’d still wanna hear. About your stars, I mean.” 

“They aren’t mine,” Amelia whispers. There’s amusement curling at the edge of her smile. “I could do that, yeah.” She’s not immediately launching back into a tangent. She’s watching Gura again. Gura stares, unable to think. Something is supercharged between them. It takes her a moment to realize they’re toeing that line. It’s close now, a breath away. She can see Amelia’s freckles up close. There’s a faint ring of pink in her eyes. She’s cotton candy and sweets. She looks deliciously beautiful. 

Gura startles when she feels Amelia’s breath against her cheeks. Her jaw tightens in surprise. They’re so close. Gura’s teeth ache. 

“You have any questions for me?” Amelia asks. Her eyes are half-lidded. Everything about that makes Gura’s toes curl. 

Can you kiss me? 

Gura meshes her mouth into a thin line. Her heart is beating at a wild tempo. It’s filling her head with cotton. It takes everything to reel herself away. She can’t unwind her hand from Amelia’s. She doesn’t want to. Her heart is fragile and it’s trembling at the way Amelia looks at her. 

“Can you give me time?” Gura whispers. 

Amelia smiles crookedly like Gura just told a good joke, “Yeah. I have time.” 

Gura relaxes at that. Amelia’s thumb brushes over her knuckles. It’s a promise. It doesn’t do anything for her poor heart. She finds she doesn’t mind. She likes the danger of a freefall, especially if it’s Amelia at the end of it all. 

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Gura thinks about where to take her. 

The rock won’t do. It just won’t. There needed to be something else here, something special. The rock was special, it was where she found Amelia, but she wants more. It’s hard to get more when her city is getting riled up about things she hasn’t been paying attention to. 

“All the shops are closed?” Gura asks. She looks in despair out on the dimly lit street. The baubles overhead weren’t as bright as they were last week. She assumes the curfew is messing up with the schedules of the Atlanteans charged with relighting them. A lot more than them were affected, apparently. 

Hammerhead hovers beside her. She’s crossing her arms and muttering, “I wanted to get new earrings too.” 

“Nothing’s open?” Gura prods again. She’s not able to keep the desperation out of her voice, “What about the enchanter down-”

“They closed last week,” Hammerhead informs her solemnly. “I tried to go there to get stuff for my brother's birthday but no one was home. There were guards everywhere.” 

“What were they doing?”

“Dunno. They sure seemed testy though. They didn’t like me moving around there.” 

Gura huffs. She’d heard that the north district was under quarantine from some kind of mold, but everyone seemed calm about it. There wasn’t any panic and the guards, while tense, didn’t say anything was wrong. Gura briefly thinks about paying a visit to her family to check on them. Would that be overreacting? 

“Still gonna visit the surface girl?” Hammerhead asks. 

“I wanted to bring her here.” Gura mumbles. “Is now even a good time?” 

“Probably not. I wouldn’t bet on it.” 

Gura frowns and looks over her shoulder. Her home is nestled between two larger buildings. Seastone orbs wreath around it. There’s no movement inside. The absence of the rest of their entourage has her twitching nervously. 

“Where’s the other two?”

Hammerhead glances behind her as well, “Huh? Weird. They were there a few seconds ago.” She exhales loudly, “Whatever. They probably went down to the sand bed to find gemstones. Wanna come with?” 

“Nah.” Gura worries her lip between her teeth, “If that enchanter comes home, could you tell me? I want to buy a gift.” 

Hammerhead’s eyes flash. There’s mischief there as she says, “Sure thing, Gura.” 

Frustration leads Gura in circles. Atlantis isn’t giving her anything to work with. She wanted to show Amelia the sights. Something to do, something to show off, something to get her to smile. Gura felt it tugging at her chest. She wanted it. 

There’s hunger in her that drives her back to the surface. It’s desperation that leads her closer than she’s ever dared before. Amelia has barely greeted her before she’s placing her hands on either side of Amelia’s legs. She leverages herself up, moving up out of the water as close as she dares. Amelia’s blinking widely, her mouth parted in surprise. 

“What?” The blonde reels, “What are you-”

“Do you have somewhere you can go?” Gura asks. “Somewhere you can take me?” 

Amelia’s expression shudders. Her eyes flash with something raw and painful, “Uh, no. I’m just the teleporting court jester.” 

“It’s not teleportation,” Gura says. She remembers that much at least. 

Amelia frowns, “Why so pushy? Did something happen?” 

“Oh.” Gura deflates. She’s crossing her arms over Amelia’s knees. “No, it’s fine. Nothing’s happened to me personally.”

“Atlantis?” Amelia asks. There’s a heaviness to her tone like she’s dreading the answer. Gura can relate. 

“... Yeah.” 

Amelia closes her eyes. She’s meshing her mouth into a thin line. The pinched expression makes Gura feel guilty. Amelia couldn’t help the situation, not as a human. She was shoving her problems onto her. 

“Sorry.” Gura murmurs. She rests her chin on her arms, more aware now of the skin contact between them. She tries not to move her fingers for fear of accidentally brushing Amelia’s thighs. “It’s not a big deal. I just feel suffocated. I wanted to show you- it doesn’t matter.” 

“It does,” Amelia says softly. “I don’t mind.” 

Gura offers a wry smile at that, “Kinda hard to get you down there in one piece, chief.” 

“I don’t need to go down there to see it.” She soothes. Her hand is hesitating, a twitch to it. Slowly, she’s moving it over to Gura’s head. Gura side-eyes it. Her heart is making itself known again. When Amelia touches her scalp it sends electric tingles down her spine. Every card of her fingers through her hair unfurls a layer of tension. 

Gura exhales, “I still-”

“I don’t need to see it,” Amelia repeats gently. “I see you. That’s enough.” 

Gura groans, miserably flustered, “I had plans, Ame.” 

The hands in her hair pause. It’s only briefly before they resume. Amelia’s voice sounds breathless as she asks, “Will you ask me questions?”

Gura frowns into her arms. She wasn’t in a good mood for that. Her mind was soaked up by her problems. Amelia taps against her head with her thumb. Gura closes her eyes and sighs through her nose. 

“Do you like sharks?” Gura asks, more so to be funny. 

“I love sharks,” Amelia says. 

Gura goes rigid. She can’t breathe. She’s frantically trying to defuse the bomb going off in her chest. It’s a tease, it’s nothing it’s a tease- She breathes. Amelia’s still petting her hair. 

“Are you,” Gura ventures shakily, “looking for a shark?” 

“One shark,” Amelia confirms, her voice quieter than a breeze. 

Well. There are four sharks that she knows of. That rules that down, but the majority of Atlanteans are shark-kind. Gura’s heart pounds in her ears. Is she the shark? She’s startled by how badly she wants to be that shark. 

“Is that why you’re here? The thing that you want.” Gura asks. “You’re looking for a shark?” 

“Yeah.” 

It was the most information they’d ever uncovered. Gura feels lightheaded. She barely misses when Amelia tacks on shyly, “Well, mostly.” 

“Mostly?” Gura feels her voice crack hysterically, “What’s mostly? What does that even mean?” 

“It means I’m looking for a shark,” Amelia whispers. “But I want something from the shark. That’s what I want.” 

“What do you want?” Gura asks. She exhales those words in one breath. She feels like she’s been punched and thrown into the sun. She tries to reel herself back in, but she’s looking up into Amelia’s eyes and the tenderness of that blue is drowning her. 

“What do I want?” Amelia repeats airly, the same game she’s been playing since day one. She smiles crookedly, “You haven’t guessed yet?” 

Gura swallows dryly. 

Amelia looks sly, “Well?” 

“I’ll get back to you on that.” Gura squeaks. “Tomorrow. I’ll ask tomorrow.”

Amelia looks infuriatingly smug about this. Gura tries not to let it turn her into more of a misshapen puddle of emotions. 

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Chapter Text

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Gura accidentally tells her friend. 

Accidental probably wasn’t the correct form of it. She drifted like a cloud, her thoughts miles above where the ocean meets the sky. She’s thinking about a rock and a smile and a- 

Oh, she’s trying so hard not to think about Amelia’s lips. 

“You figured it out?” Hammerhead is shaking her by the shoulders. Even with that, Gura can’t escape this daze. I love sharks swims in her head. She feels like she’s going to explode. “C’mon, tell me! What’s the big mystery?” 

“She’s looking for a kiss.” Gura blurts out airily. She’s utterly mystified by that revelation. That couldn’t have been the reason she was waiting on that rock, right? She always goes to the allocated time Gura shows up, even if Gura is a few hours early or late. It’s as if she knows. Time is not an issue for that woman.

Why would she want a kiss before she met Gura? That couldn’t have been her original intent. Right? Gura wants to believe she’s smarter than that, but Amelia hadn’t left to do anything else. She asked courtesy questions, but nothing substantially deep. Nothing suspicious. 

Why are you looking for me?

She’s so out of it that she misses the way Hammerhead inhales like she’s being strangled. Gura feels the other shark jostling her shoulder, “Gura, what? Are you sure? You’re not messing with me, right?” 

“No, uh,” Gura blinks dazedly, “She wants to kiss m- a shark. She wants a shark kiss.” 

Hammerhead stares. Gura blatantly realizes she may have tossed off an intentional flirt to her friend. She goes rigid. She’s startled by the urge to bare her teeth. She had no lordship over Amelia, but the idea of Amelia kissing another shark grates on her. 

Hammerhead is adopting a sly smile, “A shark? Uh-huh. Something tells me it’s you. ”

“No.” Gura belts out, too quickly. She winces because Hammerhead is looking smug about that. “No, it can’t be- she-” 

“Ohhh, Gura likes the human.” Hammerhead crows. “Gura likes the human!” 

“Shut up!” Gura shoves her. “Where are your other two clowns, huh? Go bother them.” 

“I dunno where they are.”

Gura huffs, “Tough.” 

“So?” Hammerhead prods. “Are you gonna kiss her?” 

Gura sputters. The absurdity of that, the assumption- she shakes her head, but Hammerhead is poking her roughly in the ribs. Gura swats her. Her friend is infuriatingly smug about this. 

“I dare you to kiss her.” 

“No way.” Gura belts out reflexively. She can feel her face growing warm. “No way, nope, shut up.” 

“I dare you!” Hammerhead pokes her gleefully, “I dare you, Gura! Kiss the human!” 

“No! Shut up!” 

“I’ll find the enchanter for you.” Hammerhead bargains. “You’ll get your gift.” 

That has Gura faltering. She was still holding out hope for that. Her idea was to get a helmet or something enchanted with magic to help Amelia visit Atlantis. It’d need a lot of snuff to be able to get Amelia down here. It’d be expensive. It’d be an extensive amount of magic. If Hammerhead was not only willing to get the enchanter for her but get what she wanted… 

It was just one kiss. 

Gura feels her skin burning. Embarrassment makes her want to turn inside out and scream. Her nails dig into her palm. The pressure makes her shoulders hike up to her ears. 

“One kiss.” Gura hisses out. “One kiss, and you’ll pay for every enchantment I need.” 

Hammerhead falters. She’s frowning, “Jeez, is she really that special?” 

Gura can’t work up the nerve to look her in the eye. Her heart is pounding in her ears as she aims up for the surface. She yells back, “Keep up!” 

She almost hopes Amelia isn’t there, but she always is. She’s there as Gura surfaces. She can feel the grin Hammerhead is aiming at the back of her head. Amelia stares at the both of them quizzically. 

“I thought we agreed on one shark at a time.” She muses. “You broke the rules.” 

“We figured it out,” Gura mutters. Lava would feel colder than the inferno her nerves have become. Her palms feels clammy. “We know what you want.” 

Amelia’s eyes gleam, “Yeah? What’s that?” 

Gura opens her mouth. She closes it. It’s there on her tongue but she’s caught up in the look Amelia’s giving her. It doesn’t help she has an audience. It doesn’t help she can’t hear her own thoughts over the drum beat of her heart. 

Gura approaches nervously. The waves push her and it freaks her out. She doesn’t want to go fast, she doesn’t want to approach quickly, it’s too fast, I’m not ready! She nervously grips the rock and hovers there. Amelia is a beacon of patience. She’s regarding Gura through her lashes. 

“Yeah?” The blonde prompts. 

Gura can’t find the words. She tries to tune out the poorly disguised snickering behind her. She tries to turn off her heart and her brain and- She’s just Gura. This is Amelia, the girl who stargazed with her, I love sharks. 

Tentatively, Gura hoists herself up onto her arms. She’s propped up just high enough that she’s up to Amelia’s level. She dares to lean forward, just a little, and it feels like the wind is knocked out of her when Amelia glances down at her lips. There's an aching need in her chest. More than anything she wants to- gods, so badly does she want to- 

Where should she kiss her? Gura almost flatlines on the spot. The lips, she thinks, but that’s too close and too personal and she’d explode into a fishy mess. Her cheek? Disappointing almost. Her jaw? Too sensual. Her neck? Her slender, beautiful neck that Gura would just sink her teeth- 

She’s going to explode. Amelia looks helplessly amused. 

“Gura?” She lowers her head a little, her smile bashful, “Well?” 

Gura exhales. She leans forward again. Her courage is hard to find but her love for Amelia isn’t. Love. It startles her. It makes her panic. She dips her head and nearly has a heart attack when Amelia does the same. It’s happening, it’s happening, she-

Amelia is a butterfly. Soft and chaste, her eyelashes flutter like wings. Her hand twitches in her lap like she wants to reach up and cup Gura’s cheek. Gura feels like the worst kisser in comparison. She breathes shakily and feels it when Amelia breathes back. She’s a gentle seesaw. She’s driving Gura wild. 

When they part, Gura almost whines. She wants more, but Amelia is leaning away from her. There’s a pink hue to her cheeks. She’s muttering, “Congratulations.” 

Gura laughs weakly. She can hear Hammerhead catcalling them, but she’s too exhilarated to care. She’d won the game. She kissed Amelia. 

There’s a part of her hungry for more. 

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Gura feels bad, a little. That kiss could have been better in her humble opinion. It’s all she’s thinking about. It invades her mind at every moment of her day. She wants more. She wants millions and millions more. 

Amelia kisses her back. Did she like it? Gura would like to think so. She’s stuck between questions and swooning so hard she might pass out. Amelia was looking for her. She wanted a kiss from her. 

How did she know about me?

There was still a mystery afoot. She goes to check in with Hammerhead because the others still haven’t shown up lately and it’s been a few days. Atlantis is feeling quieter than usual. She doesn’t pay it any mind. She still sees people swimming around and the familiar tail fins of her neighbors. A red mist is settling around the palace. Algae migration, the guards had called it. Gura didn’t care. 

Hammerhead isn’t home. 

Gura frowns. She tries knocking a few times on their door and waiting. No one answers. It’s not entirely sour. Hammerhead might just be busy. Maybe she went out for the enchanter. Assuaged by that, Gura swims up for the surface. Atlantis is a dimly lit oyster below her. It doesn’t shine so brightly. The red hue looks ominous. 

I’ll ask Hammerhead about it, She thinks, later.

Is it normal to ask for second kisses? It’s something that has Gura faltering and swimming in circles. Her thoughts are a whirlwind. How does she approach this? There is no peer pressure this time- it’d be just her and Amelia. 

Can I kiss you? That’s too bold. It’s the best start, but Gura covers her face with her hands and whimpers at the idea of even saying that. Out loud! She’s expecting every seagull within two miles to laugh at her. Would Amelia laugh at her? Or would she giggle and be shy and smile at her like she does, like Gura has hung the stars and the moon and- 

Gura punches past her fears. She’d already crossed the line, she might as well go in barreling at full speed. There was no going back now. They’d kissed. That meant something, right? Amelia had wanted it. 

The rock is empty. 

Gura stares at it for a long time. She's not fully comprehending the sight. Amelia has always been there no matter when Gura decided to show up. Never had the rock been empty. She glances around. She does a loop around the rock to be sure.She looks for anything, a note, something secret, something left behind- nothing. 

She’s left with nothing. 

“That can’t be right.” She mutters. Amelia wouldn’t just leave. She said she wouldn’t. Gura hovers. Was she held up? Was that even possible? Gura hadn’t ever entertained the thought that she’d be late. She was always on time. 

Gura is patient. She is antsy, but she's patient. She pulls herself up onto the rock and sits there. She leaves room at her side purposefully. She’s hoping Amelia uses whatever magic to appear there. 

Is this how she feels? Gura wonders. The seas look dark and foreboding if she stares for too long. She can’t see anything beneath them. She waited for me like this. Was she ever scared I wouldn’t show up? Did she have those days? 

She doesn’t know a lot about Amelia, she’s realizing. Does she have a family? What kinda friends keep her company? Gura starts to make a list in her head. She wasn’t keen on them before, but now the pull of the mystery has her. She wants to know all she can about Amelia. Her heart demands it. 

She waits. 

It’s only as the sun begins to set does the evening chill set in. It creeps up her spine like an omen. The sea is burning red from a dying light. Gura stares down morosely. She was worried. In her heart, she felt a bead of betrayal, but she smothered that underneath fretful thoughts. Amelia wouldn’t just ditch her. There has to be a reason. Something happened. 

What happened? 

Gura closes her eyes. When she opens them again, the sun is gone. The moon hangs as but a sliver in the sky. The stars welcome her, but the feeling isn’t mutual. Gura yearns. She kicks her feet at the red ocean. It’s a minute of pressing her heel again ruby waves does it set in the oddity of it. 

The sun has set. 

The ocean is red. 

“What?” Gura squints down below her. It was only a faint hue, but it was enough so that when she kicked at the waves, a seaspray of red would follow in its wake. It didn’t smell like anything. Gura thought it might be a mineral at first. She scoops up a handful and finds it odorless. It smells like water.

“Huh.” She says. It kind of looked like the algae water from Atlantis. Was it spreading? The guards had called it a migration. She’s interested, but the rock is rooting her in place. She doesn’t want to leave it. What if Amelia found it empty? Even worse, she’d miss Amelia. She’s fine with waiting. 

She eyes the ruby waters below. Hesitantly, she draws her legs up onto the rocks. She watches the water burn red from her vantage point. 

It’s just algae, She reassures herself. It feels vacant. It’s one thing to be told about the phenomenon. It’s another to witness it. It doesn’t feel right. It makes her hands clammy. She waits on that rock. The hours of the night pass on and there is no human to find her. It’s her, a rock, and a red sea. 

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Eventually, she has to go down. 

She can’t stay on that rock forever. As the dawn begins to break over the ocean, she dares to dip her toes back into the water. It’s not as red as it was overnight. It’s a softer shade of pink, sickly looking and out of place. She feels like she’s stepping into a pool of medicine. 

When she submerges, something stings along her gills. She breathes and idly rubs her fingers there. There’s certainly algae in the water, she notes. Little red particles are floating by her nose. They brush along her skin but they don’t stick to her. They will catch onto her gills, she notes sourly. She keeps running her fingers over it to brush them off. 

Her head feels fuzzy. 

Probably from staying up all night, she thinks. 

She descends homeward bound. The ocean is dyed pink with darker reds blended into it. Gura expects a taste or even a strange scent. It feels odd to find nothing of that. When she finds Atlantis, it comes upon her suddenly. One of the baubles nearly knocks into her head. She startles. She wasn’t expecting it to appear from the mist like that. She knows they move like clockwork, but usually, she’d be able to see its light beforehand. 

It wasn’t glowing at all. Well, it is kinda messy, I bet no one recharged it lately. She lets it go. There’s a disgusting amount of red algae that cling to it. Gura frowns and wipes her hand off on her legs. Her gills would not stop itching. The bauble wasn’t moving as it should. It felt more pressing than a little itch. 

Atlantis was quiet. With curfew abound, it hadn’t bothered her too much. It was morning though. She should be seeing, well - lights! Activity in the street felt right. Movement of any sort. She swims down until she touches the sandstone streets of her home. It’s here she finally smells something. It felt like a layer of something had been obscuring it until it crashed against her nostrils and left her coughing. 

Blood. 

What? Gura blinks. When had there been algae in her eyelashes? She reaches up and rubs it away. She’s troubled by the coppery smell. It was strong, strong enough that her eyes were burning and her lungs ached. She didn’t like it. 

She finds an arm floating between the cafe down her street and a residential house. She stares at it uncomprehendingly. It reminds her, through her shock, of what piranhas would leave of their victims. Matted, chunky flesh and ripped bits floating in the water. Skin distorted, blood marred, bone exposed- a hint of fins- 

There is more destruction down the road. Gura swims in a daze, her gills flaring. There’s a torso stuck in the sandbed. The shredded remains of a tail fin drift past her. Something had torn through here. She feels itchy. She swims faster, urgency in her wake, alarm making her afraid and something else creeping up into her chest. 

There’s movement. Her eyes snap to it. She feels scared. 

She feels hungry. 

She thinks this shark looks familiar, in a way she’s not sure. Their hair is completely red. Their eyes are red too. Nothing about them should be familiar, but- 

“I dare you to kiss her.”

The shark is coming for her, teeth bared. Ever razer sharp canine sparks something in Gura. She feels her lips curl. She feels her claws crack. She meets the shark in the middle. Her gills itch. Her head feels fuzzy. 

Her teeth ache and she satisfies that ache with tearing and biting. She can feel sharp talons digging into her skin. She retaliates with her own claws. She fights dirty. It’s a blur of red to her, a dark shadow of a shark with glowing red eyes driving her to act recklessly. She aims for the throat and she doesn’t stop. She thrashes and kicks. She bites, bites, and keeps biting. She swims. Her teeth feel like too much, and her gills are hurting but she doesn’t know why, her muscles are pinched and she’s searching for relief, something to stop this itch, something to-

She blinks slowly. The red haze is vanishing around her. It’s less potent, she thinks. She can’t make out where she is. She’s not in Atlantis anymore, she can tell that much. She’d swam away, but now she wasn’t sure where she was. She reaches up to scratch at her gills. The action hurts so much it makes her gag. 

Relief, she pants, I need something! 

She doesn’t know what it is. She dives down to the rocky bed below her. Crags loom overhead and she rams her shoulder against one. The pain is satisfying and it lights up electricity in her head. She felt something. She felt something!

She does it again and the crag gives way. For one moment, she’s left frowning over empty air, before the crag is falling down on top of her. Gura squeals, clawing at the rocks to get out, desperate to escape. She doesn’t make it. Her legs get pinned, the electric spark turning into a burning inferno. It’s scorching her calves and her tail. 

Gura wails, clawing at the rock to get out. Too much is happening. She can’t tell anymore. She’s scared. Is she in pain or is she in pleasure?

Help. She doesn’t know how long she spends writhing under that boulder. Only one thing repeated like a mantra in her head. Someone, please help!

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Gura feels pain. 

Through the numb haze and the red clouding over her vision, pain begins to sting up her knees. Her legs throb. Sharpy, angry pain is itching up her tail. She smells blood, her blood, and it makes tears blur her vision. She can barely see as it is. She can’t rest. She’s too itchy. 

She’s pinned beneath that boulder for four days. 

She can’t sleep. She can barely breathe. Her gills itch and itch and itch and whatever she can reach of them she claws at. No matter what, she can’t get this sticky, bubbling feeling off her skin. Her teeth ache for something to gnaw on. At some point, her brain snaps in half. Desperation has her hoisting her elbows against the rock. She snarls as she feels just a little bit more room, just a tad more but it’s enough that she can move. She rips herself from her trap and-

Her vision whites out. 

Her mind is a fog, but the red shine to it is fading. It’s hard to breathe but not in the same way, not like there’s something there. She’s hurt, she knows this, but she feels like she’s broken through the walls closing in around her. A cold relief washes down her shoulders. It makes her sleepy. 

What was I doing? 

She floating. Her arms are limp, her head bowed, and her tail curled close to her chest. There’s a cloud of red blood following its movement. She feels like a giant wound. She tries to breathe and struggles. Her gills aren’t working. 

She doesn’t have the strength to react when she feels something touch her back. It’s a small touch, not sharp, almost a gentle poke. It doesn’t disturb her. A soft caress that winds down around her stomach and rests securely there. She’s being moved. 

Gura drifts. 

Dry air is what wakes her up. It rattles her. She’s gasping for air. Her gills hadn’t been working, she knows, and her head felt like a balloon ready to pop. The relief of air has her coughing between breaths. Someone has her propped up, their hands on either side of her waist. 

“Calm down.” A familiar voice instructs. “You’ll hurt yourself. Breathe in once, right now, One- Breathe. Breathe in. There you go. Now out, one two three, back in.” 

The pain was returning to her. Her breathing grows shaky. Everything from her legs to her torso burned. The hands at her waist hadn’t moved. 

“Gura?” She can recognize Amelia’s voice. The bewilderment at that was buried deep under a mountain of aches. “Say hi.” 

Gura coughs. It tastes like iron. 

“Good enough,” Amelia whispers. She sounds frightened. “Your gills- you're mangled, your everything is- okay. I can do this. I prepped for this, I have- I can work with this. Yeah.” The hands flutter as they move upwards, just a tad. Gura goes rigid with tension. They’re closer to her wounds. She’s scared. 

“I’m going to help.” Amelia coaxes softly. “I need to help you. Please.” A note of desperation. Heartstrings free themselves underneath the tension. Gura manages a nod, however lopsided it is. With Amelia sitting behind her, she isn’t sure what to expect. She can feel cold metal tools touching her skin. Amelia’s hands get replaced with gloves. There are several sharp pricks of pain before her chest grows numb. Gura exhales. The relief of not feeling anything there nearly sends her into a coma. 

Amelia’s voice brings her back, “I’m scrapping it off now.” 

Scrapping off what? 

“It’s gotten really in there,” Amelia mumbles under her breath. It’s an odd sensation to not feel anything at all but still feel the pull as Amelia digs into her gills. “Hold still. It’s really damaged. You got most of it out but, uh, you really tore it up. I can’t stitch up your gills. I’m gonna put some patches on it.” 

Gura makes a noise in her throat. She’s listening. Amelia exhales shakily behind her. Gura doesn’t know how much time has passed. Her gaze focuses down on the rocks they’re on. It makes her brow furrow. She was on land. When had that happened? She tries to raise her head to take in more of her surroundings, but the strength isn’t in her. 

Amelia is pulling her down, gently, to lie on her back. Gura grunts. Her chest is numb, but her legs and her tail are still bothered. Amelia seemed to know. At this angle, Gura could finally see the blonde. There’s red smeared up her shirt. Her hands are covered in it all the way past the elbow. It’s gruesome, Gura thinks foggily. She can barely comprehend that it’s hers. 

Amelia looks pale, but her face is set with determination. Blue eyes briefly glance down to meet hers, “I’ve got you, okay? I’m gonna stitch up your legs and your tail now.” 

“Okay.” Gura croaks. Her voice sounds like gravel. 

Amelia's expression shudders with relief. She looks close to tears as she says, “Okay.” 

Numbness washes over her. Amelia rambles as she works, little tugs against Gura’s skin that tell her what the blonde is doing, but without pain to keep her awake, she feels herself fading. She breathes and it doesn’t feel like she’s being strangled. Instead, it feels like her chest is wound tight by a rubber band. She can still breathe, it’s just uncomfortable. 

In between breaths, she feels a hesitant touch on the top of her head. She hears something sweet in her ears but can’t make it out. It’s a nice dream. She holds it close to her as she loses all sense of herself. 

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Gura feels sick. She wakes up between bursts of bright light and noise. She groans. There’s always someone there in those moments, their hands gently cupping her head. Sweet sounds usher her back to sleep. Medicine hushes the fire in her veins. She aches, but she doesn’t feel like a gushing wound anymore. 

She opens her eyes. 

Amelia looks down at her. The sky is dark and there are stars freckled around her. The light of the moon is against her back. It casts her face in shadows. It makes her look sad. 

“Hey.” She whispers quietly. “You there?”

Gura grunts. She’s not quite awake for words. Everything feels stiff. Amelia’s hand is against her cheek, a tentative touch. Her thumb rubs just beneath her eye. Gura relaxes. With enough willpower, she’s able to croak, “I’m here.” 

Amelia’s lips twitch with relief, “Hi.” 

“Hi.” The gentle caresses have her eyes fluttering close. She’s content to fade into this pampering. She instinctively tries to breathe through her gills. When no air comes to her, she coughs. It wakes her back up. “Why…?”

“I patched them,” Amelia whispers. “Your gills. You… well, how much do you remember?”

She remembers Atlantis. There are snips in her brain that she can recall, from descending through the red mist down to abandoned streets. Everything after that is too hazy to make out. The phantom itch makes her grimace. 

“It was some… fungus.” Gura mumbles. “Algae?”

“Algae,” Amelia mutters. 

“Yeah. It got into my gills. I couldn’t think.” 

“I got it all out,” Amelia reassures. “But… You really did a number on yourself.” 

Gura’s fingers twitch. She exhales shakily, “How bad?” 

She doesn’t get an immediate answer. She peeks her eyes open. Amelia’s gazing down at Gura’s chest, her eyes far away. It makes Gura nervous. She has a brief memory of Amelia covered in her blood. 

“Ame?” Gura asks. 

Amelia glances down at her. Her face softens, “... They’ll heal, it’ll just take time.”

“There’s bad news,” Gura says. “Tell me the bad news.” 

“... You won’t be able to use them anymore,” Amelia whispers. She sounds less like she’s reading a diagnosis and more like she’s remembering something she’s known by heart. “Your legs will heal. Your tail… well.” Amelia’s expression pinches. “Look for yourself.” 

Gura can barely even process the idea of not being able to breathe underwater. Amelia is gently nudging her shoulders. She’s helping her sit up. Gura obliges, leaning on her elbow to look down and take stock of the damage. 

First, her clothes have been changed. She’s wearing a white tunic, airy and soft. It’s white, without a hint of red on it. Her legs are wrapped up to her thighs in bandages. Gura feels her gaze locked onto her tail. All the breath in her lungs is punched out in an instant. 

She’s missing a fin. 

The other fin is wrapped tightly in bandages. The half that should be there but isn’t is mummified. Gura stares. Horror swims tight in her gut. She couldn’t just breathe underwater anymore. She couldn’t swim either. 

“I...” Hot tears are blurring her vision, “I don’t understand.” 

Amelia doesn’t say anything. Her fingers are running up and down Gura’s shoulders. It’s comforting, but it’s doing nothing for the grief that has her in a chokehold. Gura shakes with sobs. It’s settling in now with cold clarity. Her memories are fragmented, but she remembers the corpses she found down there. 

“Atlantis.” Gura chokes out. “Something happened.”

“The algae,” Amelia whispers. 

“What about it?” Gura hiccups. “What- how can algae do that?” 

“It’s…” A brief hesitation before, “It’s a parasitic algae. It zombifies the host. The red coloring is because it needs blood, it drinks blood. From every orifice of the algae, it extracts blood. When it infects its host it sends signals to the brain through the lung- your gills. You're breathing chemicals at that point. It wants as much blood as possible and that,” Amelia rambles, “that’s like a computer virus. It takes over your brain.” 

Gura doesn’t know what a computer is. She’s breathing shallowly. The hands on her shoulders don’t feel comforting anymore. She turns her head to look over her shoulder. Amelia meets her eye. 

“How,” Gura asks, “do you know that?” 

Amelia blanches. She’s averting her gaze. Gura wrenches herself from the human’s hands. She feels cold. In between grief and pain, horrifying clarity is settling into her bones. 

“Ame.” She says, her voice steely. “What kind of traveler are you?” 

Amelia ducks her head. There’s a guilty hunch to her shoulders. Gura bristles. She’s forcing down the urge to bare her teeth. Betrayal is burning hot in her stomach. She needs to know. 

“Ame.” She says. 

“I’m a time traveler,” Amelia mutters. 

“You knew.” Gura hisses. “You knew. ”

Amelia glances up at her. She looks tired, but there’s a stubborn set to her jaw. Her hands are clenched tight into fists. She’d changed clothes too, Gura realizes. It’s just them on the rocky beach. There’s no way she could have gotten spare clothes for the both of them unless she- 

“Yeah,” Amelia says, fire in her eyes. “I knew.” 

“You-” Gura starts. There’s lightning between her teeth. It’s choked out in a moment as a cough rattles her. Amelia reaches a hand out. Without thinking, Gura slaps it away. She doesn’t entirely manage that. It ends up being more of a frantic flailing of her arm that nudges Amelia’s hand away. Amelia gathers her hand back to her chest. She looks hurt. 

Gura doesn’t want to feel guilty about that. She’s angry that she even feels a tiny bit guilty. She snaps out, “Don’t touch me.” 

“Fine,” Amelia says. She’s frowning as she takes a stand. There’s dirt and grime all up her legs and over her skirt. “You obviously need some time alone.” 

Gura’s ready to snap at her again when there’s a bright, golden flash. Gura blinks. The space in front of her is empty. Comprehension dawns on her. She sits there, breathless, angry, and with an unsettling realization that she was alone. 

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This beach is her hell. 

The rocks near the shore are flat and easy to crawl on. Her legs aren’t working. Sharp movements aggravate her tail and leave her shaking with pain. She’s relearning how to breathe without her gills. It feels like she’s plugged her nose and is having to breathe through her mouth. She stops more often than not just to collect herself. She’s weak. She’s frustrated. 

She feels like a baby trying to relearn everything she already knows. She bares her teeth as her fingers find hot, grainy sand. The rocks were giving way to the rest of the shoreline. Nearly half a mile ahead was a sharp incline up into rough terrain. She could see trees up there.

She needed shade. Something to cool her down. The sun burns along her shoulders. Every few feet she pauses to break, heaving for air and sweating. 

Gross. 

Above all of this, above the frustration of her inabilities and dealing with pains, she’s angry. Betrayal is needling along her skin. She swears under her breath. Every conversation, every interaction, time travel-

She knew. 

“Why didn’t you say anything?” Gura hisses between her teeth. Her tongue felt dry. She gags and snaps, “You just sat there with that coy little smile and you- you-!” 

She slams her fist down onto the sand. She ends up with a bunch over her face, the grains sticking to her eyelashes and getting in her mouth. She coughs. She doesn’t want to dwell on that mistake. She puts her energy towards crawling. 

You knew I was falling in love with you, didn’t you? Gura quietly seethes, a wound in more ways than one tearing her open. You couldn’t have been there by accident. You said you were looking for a shark. Looking for me! Why? Why am I so special that you-?

It must have been a ploy of some sort. She’s not sure what kind of scheme she landed herself in or what the point of it was. She chews on her lip with annoyance. She feels like she’s been toyed with, that much was obvious, but the how and why are alluding her. Time travel, she knows. Amelia had to be from the future. It explains how she knew about the algae- about Atlantis, even where it was. 

But how would she know all that? 

Gura’s frustrated to find more questions than she’s ever had before. With the mystery surface girl, she’d only ever wanted to ask her sweet questions. With Amelia the time traveler, Gura sorely wants to take her neck between her teeth. It’d be too soon if she saw the blonde again. 

It takes her hours to climb the sand. It rakes over her skin and leaves her itchy. She hates the feeling. It reminds her too much of what happened under the waves. She decided then and there that sand was her least favorite thing. It’s a relief when her hands find purchase in the dirt instead of sand. 

It’s another trial to hoist herself up onto the rough terrain. The climb is steep and without the function of her legs she’s left with sore, shaking arms. Her back stings fiercely from sunburn. She feels too hot. 

Her hand touches something soft that isn’t grass. She flinches. She’s half expecting a seashell or a crab. When she peaks over the terrain, she finds a box. It’s a small plastic thing wrapped up in a little yellow and white checkered cloth. Gura stares at it. It looked out of place on the desolate beach. A familiar scent is wrapped around the gift. 

Amelia. 

Gura breathes. Spiteful anger has her raising a closed fist over the box. Don’t you dare take pity on me. She hesitates. She can smell food instead of that box. She hasn’t eaten, she can feel the pull on her stomach. Hunger pains hadn’t claimed her yet but she knew she wasn’t far from it. Her body was focused on her injuries but since those have been tended to, it’s only a matter of time before she has a new problem. 

Amelia knew that too. 

Gura snarls. She brings her fist down and revels in the box splintering apart underneath her fist. She still has the strength to do that much. She can survive just fine on her own. She doesn’t need to be meddled with. 

There’s fruit in the box. Most of it was mangled by her fist. Grapes flattened against the rock, pineapple slices that were riddled with wooden chunks, and carefully peeled apples that were nothing but mush now. Gura slowly draws her hand back to her chest. There’s a fork and a spoon broken at the bottom of the box. A little roll of napkins, now splattered with fruit juices, have hearts decorated on them. 

The only thing that survived are two strawberries. 

Gura frowns. She’s sorely tempted to flick her finger and shoot them off into the sand. One is bruised from her assault. The other looks relatively fine in comparison. She cups both into her hands and scrutinizes them. 

She pops the clean one into her mouth. She almost wishes she hadn’t when the ravenous hunger grips her and she’s left gasping for air, holding back every muscle from just launching her face into the box for more. The last strawberry is looking a little strangled in her palm. 

She leaves it in the box. 

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Gura finds shelter in the roots of a tree. They’re upturned, just enough so she can worm herself underneath the bough of the tree. The dirt is wet here. It clings to her skin. She can feel it in her hair and smearing along her clothes. She cringes, but it’s shelter. It’s cold and that’s sorely what her poor burnt skin needed. She rests there. 

When she wakes, there’s a yellow box by her knee. 

Gura bristles. Her hackles rise, outraged the human even managed to sneak so close to her. It’s a different cloth, a flat yellow color. There’s food in this one as well. 

Gura doesn’t even have time to think about discarding it. Her stomach makes itself known in the worst way. It feels like a hand is closing around her torso. She curls up, her arms wrapped tight around her stomach. It doesn’t alleviate the pain there. It makes her choice for her. 

With a shaky hand, she’s taking the cloth off the box. The smell that hits her makes her mouth slimy. She grits her teeth. She won’t drool. She won’t. It’s taking everything to orient herself. She doesn’t think Amelia is watching her, but she wants her dignity intact anyway. She pries open the box. 

A neat arrangement of vegetables greets her. There’s parsley wrapped in peppers, mint decorated along every compartment and wafting up to tickle her nose, broccoli and carrots arranged around a strange-looking sauce, and crushed-up fruit into a salad. A fork and a spoon sit daintily wrapped in the middle of it all. 

With a pout, Gura grabs the utensils and sets to work. 

It’s not fun. Her stomach recoils and threatens to make her sick with every bite. Her wounds ache. She’s frustrated and her skin is too hot. The vegetables are cold and fresh. They haven’t been out for very long. Time travel. Am I eating future vegetables?

It tempers her. Once the box is empty, she sits there, unsure of herself. She places the utensils back inside. The angry part of her that wanted to tear the box apart was simmering down. Her stomach wasn’t cranky. Her wounds were patched. 

… She needed to find survivors. 

Amelia would know. That makes Gura grimace. She wanted nothing to do with the time traveler now, but if she could get answers, she needed to grit her teeth and deal with it. It wouldn’t be pleasant. Gura feels like she deserves to know. The more she thinks about it, the more set in the idea she is. 

She crawls. It hurts. She inhales sharply when a twig tugs at her fins, but otherwise makes it out of her shelter unscathed. She sets the box down in front of her and pushes it. It's marred at the grass underfoot and leaves a divet. It looks like a line. 

Amelia sits down across from her. 

It takes everything not to bristle. Gura inhales, startled by the scent of pinecones and lemons. She wasn’t expecting her. Maybe she should have. She’d already decided, and Amelia knew. Despite this, it angers her.

“You.” Gura bites out. 

Amelia regards her impassively. Her clothes are different. She’s built herself a ticker skin in the form of a coat, two extra layers. The bill of a hat casts her face in shadow. Her eyes have a fierceness to them that Gura hasn’t seen before. There’s a flash of annoyance there too, “Me.” 

Gura would not lose this game. She reels herself in. It’s hard to inhale the anger back down her throat and say, “I have questions.” 

“I’ll answer them,” Amelia says.

“Where are other Atlanteans?” 

Amelia’s expression flickers. She’s not answering right away. Gura’s stomach feels cold, “... Where are they?” 

“I won’t lie to you.” Amelia starts, but Gura hisses. Amelia looks hurt. “I won’t.”

“Just tell me where they are.”

“They’re right here,” Amelia murmurs. She looks less like a stone wall now, softer, afraid- not of Gura, but for her. Gura breathes and it doesn’t make it out of her lungs all the way. 

“If that’s a joke-”

“I said I won’t lie,” Amelia says. 

“Swear.” Gura hates how her voice breaks. “Swear you’re not joking around, or, or playing with me or-”

“I promise, I swear.” Amelia raises her hand for emphasis. Her stare is unblinking as she says, “You’re the last.” 

Gura sits with that. A quiet breeze is the only thing between them. The rustle of trees around them, the swaying of the grass, the tick of a watch- an empty box. Gura stares down at it dispassionately. Empty. 

“Why did you save me?” Gura asks hollowly. 

Amelia’s hands clench in her lap, “...What kind of question is that?”

“If I’m really the last,” Gura says and she doesn’t believe it, not yet, it sounds more like a joke to her- “Why bother? Couldn’t you have made it all gone? What’s the point?” 

The distance between them disappears. Gura jolts as hands clamp onto her shoulders. She’s coldly woken up by the sharpest pair of blue eyes. Amelia is scowling. 

“What’s the point?” Amelia hisses. She gives Gura a shake. “Don’t say that. I would save you a hundred times more if I have to. Don’t ever say that.” 

Gura opens her mouth. She’s not even sure where to begin with that. Her heart is betraying her, one mournful little beat that throws her off kilter. She hates how warm it makes her. She feels special again. She was only searching for one shark. 

“Why me?” Gura dares to ask again, less mournful and more desperate, more hopeful, “Tell me why you saved me.”

Amelia makes a face. She struggles with herself. Gura can see an internal battle happen. The hands fisted into her shirt loosen until they fall onto the box. 

“Because I love you.” Amelia’s voice is quiet as a cricket. Her expression is a love letter that’s been ripped apart and glued back together with bandaid-covered fingers. It’s love, it’s what Gura’s been seeing every day on that rock. She’s too stunned to speak. 

They were words she hadn’t even been realizing she’d hoped to hear. 

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Gura doesn’t know what she feels. 

Of course, there’s warmth. It’s been there, a low burning ember in her chest whenever she thought of Amelia. Now, it’s addled with other emotions. She’s angry, she feels off-kilter, everything is upside down and it’s not the same. Is it? She’s still talking to the same surface girl. The mystery has changed. 

Did Amelia change too? 

I love you, the time traveler says. Those words wrap around her head and bind her. It’s always there. She’ll always think about it, no matter what. What does she say? She hadn’t known. She kept her mouth shut. It was too much. 

Amelia hadn’t taken it personally. She’d given a small smile. Now, the time traveler wasn’t gone for very long. Now, as Gura recovered in her shelter, Amelia was there. It was a presence Gura tolerated. She felt more like a keen observer than she was a tangible part of Amelia’s activities. 

The blonde brings with her medicine and supplies. Gura rests, but she hesitates over these gifts. It felt like pity. She could survive by herself, she knew that and she wanted to prove that- but Amelia presents a blanket to her with gentle eyes. 

“Thought it’d be a little nasty laying in the dirt,” Amelia murmurs. “Keeps the gunk outa your bandages too. Don’t want those infected.” 

“No.” Gura agrees slowly. She’s being bribed, bartered with, something. Amelia looks all too eager to provide. “... You shouldn’t have.” 

“It’s fine, it’s no big deal,” Amelia says. “They were there and, well, not being used. I just figured.” 

Gura accepts the blanket with awkward hands. Amelia gives her more in the form of medicine that makes her aches disappear, in the form of more boxes with carefully presented food. Gura hesitates over these offerings. She doesn’t like it, but she likes it. She’s at war with herself. 

She wakes up one morning with a headache. Her hole under the tree was laden with touches of Amelia. A pillow for her, blankets, a half-empty box of food, and cloth draped over the entrance to keep away the sun. Amelia is sitting near her. The blonde is eyeing her warily as she wrings out a washrag into a bowl. 

Gura watches her. She whispers, “You’re trying too hard.”

“I feel like I’m doing too little,” Amelia mutters. She hesitates before she’s offering the washcloth. Gura doesn’t want it. She knows having it there over her forehead would be a delight on her aching head. She’s too stubborn for help. She doesn’t want to hurt Amelia’s feelings. She wants her gone. It’s too much confusion and an internal battle for her. It makes her head hurt more. 

With a wince, she’s folding back into her pillow. She hears shuffling. It’s not her decision, nor her permission. A part of her wants to bristle when she feels a tentative touch on the top of her head. The larger part of her that doesn’t want to make a decision is happy that Amelia is making it instead. The washcloth over her forehead is blissful. It’s numbing the anger itching at her skin. She exhales. 

“I can answer any questions.” Amelia reminds her quietly. 

Gura thinks her head might explode if she tries to think. The irony of questions still being their communication is not lost on her. Gura mutters dryly, “Tell me tree facts.” 

“Well,” Amelia starts like a lid sliding off a large bottle, “They’re the longest living organisms, they have like, this ability to predict climate change- not actual, well maybe actual, but natural kinda-” 

Gura learns absolutely nothing. She lays there with a cloth over her eyes and listens to Amelia’s voice. She rambles in Gura’s silence. It’s about inane things. It fills the air with her voice, awkwardly stilted at times and other times a little hum between her words as she gets immersed in her thoughts. 

I love you, the time traveler said. 

Do I feel the same? Gura thinks. She feels like a fly caught in a trap. Amelia is from the future. Amelia says she loves her. Does she love her in the future? How far is this future? They’re questions she’s too afraid to ask. It felt like she’d be giving an inch. She doesn’t want to give anything at all. Amelia gives too much, she feels. The girl talks and talks and almost thoughtlessly, she’s carding her fingers through Gura’s hair. They stroke along her temples and smooth out the stress there. 

Gura doesn’t know if this love is real. Maybe, she thinks, it’s real for Amelia. It’s real for the girl who experienced it and is experiencing it again. For Gura? She’s not sure. She’s being struck with a tether and pulled along by the whims of time. 

She’s alone, even if Amelia is here, she’s very alone. 

It starts as a hiccup and in her next breath shudders out as a whimper. She’s trying not to cry. The cloth is warm on her face and soaks up her tears. Her chest heaves with sobs she’s forcing down. Amelia’s voice is quieter than before. A cautious butterfly in a graveyard. She doesn’t demand anything of Gura. She talks about trees. When she runs out of trees to talk about, she talks about bugs. She keeps talking, even after Gura is spent and she hasn’t anything left in her to cry. 

And hesitantly, Gura allows herself to think, I like you. 

There’s no immediate shame, no vitriol, no expected self-anger. She breathes shakily. She allows herself that much, for now. She likes the hands carding through her hair and the voice that dips and hums. She likes Amelia, who doesn’t leave her side, even if she wants her to. 

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What is love when it’s not barred by yearning? 

More importantly, where is it when there isn’t anything confusing to think about? Gura feels like there’s too much unsaid. She has questions, but she’s tired of questions. She’s tired of that being the only thing between them. When she takes her first shaky steps out of her shelter, Amelia’s hands hover close to her elbow. She's concentrating, her gaze sharp, and Gura has to fight not to stumble just because she’s distracted by how inanely cute that is. 

Her legs are fine. Her tail…

“I have something for you,” Amelia murmurs. She has that wariness about her whenever she approaches Gura. She treads on broken glass. Gura lets her approach at her own speed. It’s easier to digest when neither are making quips. Her anger is quelled, but she feels like any wrong step and it’d reignite that fire in her. 

Amelia holds out a triangle.

“What?” Gura squints down at it. It’s large enough Amelia needs to hold it with both of her hands. Thick, sturdy, and it- yes, Gura reaches out to touch it, it’s flexible. She bends it with her finger. When she lets go, it folds back into its original shape. 

“It’ll need regular maintenance.” Amelia is saying. “It’s the best I could do to mimic the- well, it has a coating of gel on it. The gel shouldn’t wear off but if you, like, scratch at it and get it scuffed up enough it’ll need another coating. It stops it from molding but it also helps with hydrodynamics. You can-”

“What is it?” Gura asks in bewilderment. She’s taking it from Amelia’s hands. The blonde let it go unresistingly. She looks amused. 

“It’s a fin,” Amelia says. 

Gura pauses. She has the urge to test her claws on the piece. Her gaze is distracted by Amelia’s hands. They’re still open, hesitant, waiting. She’s watching Gura’s reaction very keenly. There’s a multitude of different colored bandaids on her fingers. 

Gura looks back down at the fin. She’s acknowledging now a source for her anger, and it’s a faulty one. In her head, she had nowhere to direct that anger. She was alone. She’d lost everything. Why? How? The only one around is Amelia. 

It strikes her that she was blaming Amelia for her misfortune. 

She hadn’t been using it, no, but it’d been simmering under her skin. Waiting. She clenches her jaw. Amelia time travels. She knew Atlantis would fall. She knew that’s where Gura would be. She… 

“When you sat on the rock,” Gura says quietly, “you were able to smile despite knowing I’d lose everything.” 

Amelia flinches like she’d struck her. She’s hissing out a quiet breath, “Gura-” 

“Did you care about that?” Gura asks. She keeps her gaze rooted on the fin. “About the other sharks with me? About Atlantis?” 

Amelia doesn’t speak. 

Gura exhales. She feels brittle. The gift in her hands was too much. She holds it out. When Amelia doesn’t immediately take it, Gura snaps, “Take it back.” 

“It’s yours,” Amelia whispers. 

“Take it back,” Gura says forcefully. She’s not going to wait. She’s letting the fin drop from her hands. Amelia is quick. She snatches it from the air before it can hit the ground. The blonde cradles it close to her chest. Her expression is pinched. 

“Okay,” Amelia mutters. 

Gura waits. The angry part of her wants to hear one more word, just one more. Something to set her off. She wants to be justified. She’s simmering hotly and with nothing to tip her over the edge, she grits her teeth. 

Amelia stands there and looks at her helplessly. She offers nothing. 

And Gura lets the tension uncoil from her shoulders. She exhales one long breath. Her stomach feels tight and she doesn’t like how stiff her muscles feel. They both stand there, the future and the past. It’s a battle that can’t be fought and won. 

I don’t want to fight. Gura rubs a hand over her face. It frustrates her. She can’t find a middle ground with herself or Amelia. She wants peace. She wants her life back. 

“You’re a time traveler,” Gura whispers. 

“Yeah?” Amelia hedges, wariness in her tone. 

“If you could go back and stop yourself from ever appearing on that rock,” Gura asks, “Would you?” 

“Not a chance.” Amelia answers. It’s a lightening fast response. She looks like she didn’t even have to think about it. “I’d do it again. I’d do it a hundred more times.” 

More? 

Gura digests that information. She lets it behind closed doors. She lets it settle in her bones. Amelia said she would answer any question. 

“Why do you love me?” Gura asks. She’s almost afraid to. 

She’s terrified of the way Amelia’s expression drops to that tenderness. Her eyes soften to crystal blue and it takes everything in Gura to not roll over and apologize. 

“You-” Amelia cuts herself off with a weak laugh, “You found me in the future.” She looks away, her smile soft and reserved elsewhere. Gura can barely handle that. Prodding for more might make her head explode. 

Gura stares. In the future. She was in Amelia’s future. 

Her next question is too much. She doesn’t ask it. She’s too afraid to. She doesn’t have the courage to know. She dismisses the thought and lets herself walk on. Amelia follows, her faithful shadow ready to catch her if she stumbles. It makes her heart stutter. 

It’s nothing to the question burning on her tongue. 

Do I love you too in the future? 

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When she’s finally on her feet, she thinks about it. 

Amelia is her shadow but she hovers less now that her legs have healed. She glances furtively down at Gura’s torso at times. Gura catches these small glimpses. She knows Amelia wants to check on her gills. Gura isn’t so sure she’s ready for that care and treatment, not while conscious, not while they’re balanced on a razor-thin wire. 

But she feels a phantom itch on her side. It could be from anything. Dirty bandages, scabbing wounds, her gills healing, anything- but her mind flies back to a red sea. It hurts to breathe very suddenly. She struggles and gasps. In one blink and the next, Amelia is in front of her. Her hands are cupping Gura’s face. 

Blue. 

Gura exhales. It rattles around in her chest like a loose pebble, but her brain feels less like a startled cat now. She barely realizes Amelia is holding her face as she is, with gentle fingers and a thumb that caresses her cheek every once in a while. The blue of her eyes is grounding her. 

“You good?” Amelia asks. She looks spooked. 

“I’m fine.” Gura croaks. Her body aches from the tension wound up tightly in every muscle. When she comes back to herself, she realizes she’s leaning into Amelia’s hands. She feels absurd like she’s sunbathing, curling up on a nice rock and melting underneath gentle rays. That’s Amelia’s hands. 

Embarrassment flames down her neck. She hesitates, ready to withdraw but not wanting to leave this peace. Amelia is watching her with concerned eyes. 

“I’m really fine,” Gura says. Her voice shakes, but she means it. 

Amelia nods and drops her hands away. Gura whines. The moment the noise escapes her throat she’s reeling from embarrassment. Her face is burning as she turns away. She won’t look at Amelia’s reaction. It’d be too much. 

“Can I,” Amelia’s voice is quiet behind her, hopeful, “uh, can I check out your bandages today? Just a check-up.” 

I don’t need your help, is fast and sharp on her tongue. Gura swallows it down. Her heart is stumbling over those emotions. For once, it’s speaking louder than anger. It has her muttering, “Okay.” 

“Okay?”

“Just get it over with.” 

That’s how Gura finds herself lying on her back. She feels too tense. Anticipation thumps in her chest. Amelia sits by her elbow. Her knees are brushing her arm. Gura can feel goosebumps when Amelia touches her. First, it’s along her bandages. It’s not quite a touch. 

Gura hisses as some of the bandages peel off. Amelia whispers apologies, but it’s with half her attention focused on the injury before her. Gura peeks an eye open to watch her work. The stinging pain isn’t terrible, but it hisses between her teeth and makes her want to squirm. 

Amelia’s fingers are tender. She brushes them along her gills, looking for a reaction, finding none and absentmindedly nodding her head. The feeling of her fingers drives smoke into Gura’s head. She hopes Amelia can’t see how red she is. 

“It’s healing,” Amelia murmurs, more to herself. “It’s not… healing properly though, a little, uh, it might need- well.” She murmurs a few words under her breath. She keeps touching. Do you know what you do to me? Gura wants to wail. She bites down on her lip to hold back the noises threatening to bubble out. She’d sooner toss herself back into the ocean than fumble like that again. 

Her luck is terrible. Amelia glances up at her, her mouth open with a question on her tongue, but she freezes. She stares at Gura with wide eyes. Gura stares back. Her heart is in her throat. If she was burning before, now she was magma. 

“Oh,” Amelia whispers. In the darkness of this shelter, Gura can make out pink along her cheeks. Gura releases a rattled breath, startled, she’s embarrassed too. She feels like she’s floating now. 

“Um,” Gura nearly squeaks, “what’s the verdict?”

“You’re, uh, you’re fine.” Amelia fidgets. “Some of the, uh, arches of your gills are healing backward-”

“What-”

“It’s fine though, it’s fine.” Amelia waves her hand dismissively. “You might have a little trouble breathing underwater but you’ll be fine.” 

“Okay,” Gura says slowly. “Do they stay bandaged?”

“Yes,” Amelia says, some of the professionalism coming back to her. There’s a clinical look in her eye as she fishes out from her supplies another roll of bandages. “Yeah, hold on, let me get you ready.” 

Gura thinks she’ll go insane if she stays on the floor a moment longer. When Amelia touches her side again, she can’t help it. The whimper that tumbles out of her mouth has her reaching up to slap a hand onto her face. Amelia is frozen. 

Gura hopes her injuries kill her. It’d save her from this embarrassment. 

“Don’t look at me,” Gura begs. 

The jerk has the gall to smile at her, a wondrous lilt to it, “What was that just now?”

“Amelia,” Gura says sharply. 

The blonde ducks her head with an impish giggle. Gura covers her face with both her hands. She won’t even look. She doesn’t want to see Amelia’s smile. She can already feel it in the playful fingers tracing along her skin. There was more confidence there. A clinical touch and then, mischievously, a sly caress over her tummy. 

I’m going to die. Gura’s mouth hurt from clenching her jaw. She won’t give anything. Not a single noise. She was hot lava and threatening to explode into a pile of nerves and feelings. 

“There,” Amelia whispers. “You’re all set.” 

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It starts with her hands. 

Love language can be lost and relearned. Gura relearns it with her fingers. She’s taking hesitant steps out of the cage she’s holed herself in. She’s strong, but she’s been bent. She’s not broken but she can feel it in the tenderness of her wounds. She’s cautious. She doesn’t say she’s vulnerable, she doesn’t want to be. Not for Amelia. She’s not ready for that. 

But she wants to be. 

She hooks her fingers underneath Amelia’s. It’s a light touch. She wouldn’t even call it a touch. It’s a passive interest, a quiet and thoughtful moment. Amelia watches her with an unreadable expression. She doesn’t make any move to reciprocate. Gura appreciates that. She doesn’t want that right now. She wants to be in control of this much at least. 

She threads her fingers. Amelia has callouses, she finds. A scar over her pinky. One of her nails has been bitten down. There’s a thin scratch over her pointer finger. A paper cut? Gura hums. 

“Were you working?”

“This morning,” Amelia says, which doesn’t make sense since the sun just rose. 

“Is time running differently there?” 

“Well, yeah. It’s the future. Here I can appear whenever I want. It could be midnight back home and still be morning here.” 

Home. Gura thinks about that. There’s a traitorous thought that occurs to her. She hopes she’s there too in this future, that she’s a part of that life and- No. Gura meshes her lips into a thin line. She feels too gnarled for such flowery thoughts. Amelia loves her in the future. Does she love her back? 

What pitiful future, years and years from now, would exist if she didn’t?

She’s afraid to ask. She doesn’t want to entertain the idea of unrequited love. She wants to heal. She wants to be able to touch Amelia’s hand without the barbs around her heart. It’s a yearning that strikes her down. 

“I miss-” Gura starts and stops. 

“You miss?” Amelia hedges. 

I miss the old us. That sounded childish. She turns her head away. Does she really miss begging for scraps of information at that rock? For just a shred of attention to go her way? She exhales stressfully. 

Amelia’s fingers twitch. She feels it, a small intent there. An attempt at comfort, an aborted action. Amelia’s expression is pinched. 

Gura smiles wryly, “It’s nothing.” 

“Okay,” Amelia says slowly. “If you’re sure.” 

She’s not, but that’s hardly going to stop her from wrapping her hand with Amelia’s. It’s a delicate handhold. It feels like a tiny promise. She feels like a kid making sandcastles and pinky swears. 

Amelia swings their joined hands. 

Gura can’t help but smile, “I’m sure.” 

Amelia’s lips tilt up into a crooked grin. There’s adventure there. Gura feels reckless when she sees Amelia smile like that. The urge to push past brambles and barbs and take her face in her hands and dip down, down to her lips and- It’s an insatiably frustrating urge. It feels like it's too fast. It feels like it’s not enough. 

Her free hand reaches. Amelia watches her with wary eyes, but she has patience and trust. Gura’s hand shakes as she hesitates just before her face. She’s scared. She feels fragile, but nothing is comparable to how fragile Amelia is under her hand. She traces blonde bangs. She starts by tucking them behind Amelia’s ear. Amelia lets her, her eyes fluttering in a pretty way. 

Gura feels like she’s breathing too heavily. Trying to keep it together only makes her feel like she’s going to cough and if she ends up coughing in Amelia’s face she’ll just die right there. She touches one finger against Amelia’s cheek. Another. She’s too scared to rest her palm, that’s way too much, that’s-

Amelia sighs. It’s unbearably pretty. Gura swallows down the noise she wants to make, like a dog whining for attention. She cups her hand against Amelia’s cheek. Amelia has freckles, that she knew, but up close she can see every constellation across her skin. Gura dares to touch them, her thumb stroking just below Amelia’s eye. Amelia’s watching her, her gaze half-lidded. Something about that sends electric tingles all the way down to her tail. For once, it’s not the painful kind of spark. It’s something fever bright and wonderful. 

She wants to kiss her. 

“Do I,” Gura starts, her tongue tied and her throat dry, “Do we hang out in the future?” 

Amelia’s eyebrows raise in amusement, “Yeah.” 

“A lot?”

“Every day.” 

“Mmh.” Gura fights to speak over her pounding heart. “Are we friends?” 

Amelia smiles. It’s sugary sweet and viper sly. Her eyes glitter with secrets. It’s enticing. Gura is drawn back to a mystery. She wants to take that smile and eat it. 

“What do you think friends do?” Amelia asks instead. 

Gura might faint. The thoughts that cross her mind leave her face burning. She feels like she’s out of breath when she hasn’t moved in the slightest. Hope burns hot under her skin. The future includes her and it might- it just might be- 

She feels like it’s too much to hope for a happy ending to all this. To have it presented to her is lifting her world upside down. There’s a golden life waiting down the road. How far is it? How wonderful is it? She thinks she’ll go insane. 

Gura whispers, “They don’t do this.” 

“No,” Amelia confirms softly. “They don’t.” 

She flexes her fingers against Gura’s. Gura likes the sensation of it. She finds herself holding Amelia’s hand all morning. It’s a promise of something bigger, something meant for her, I’m looking forward to it. 

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Acceptance begins with her tail. 

She’s in control of it again and it makes her wary. She’s been attentive in keeping it off the ground and as clean as possible. The bandages had come off. All she could see were the stitches. Those very same stitches that Amelia was looking at. She wasn’t touching her tail, which Gura was grateful for. She feels like she might kick her if she does. 

“They need to come out.” Amelia murmurs.

Gura turns her head away. She covers her ears with her hands. She feels it very quickly as Amelia’s hand brushes her fins. She twitches, her lips curling. She wants to lash out, but she can feel metal tools touching her tail. There are tiny pinches. One by one, one by one, Gura counts them in her head. She breathes. 

And just as quickly, the hands are backing off. Gura relaxes. She lets her hands fall down. When she dares to look, Amelia is watching her warily. She’d taken four steps back. 

Her tail is fine. 

Gura sighs, “...Maybe-”

“That can be it.” Amelia offers. The caution about her makes Gura feel put on the spot. Amelia walks on eggshells around her and it's starting to do something to her. She appreciates the distance. She hates it. 

“Can I try it?” Gura asks. 

Amelia stares at her. Slowly, she’s crouching down. From her first aid kit, she’s withdrawing the prosthetic. Gura tenses at the sight of it. Its color isn’t the same as her tail. It’s slightly darker in color. Dead limb. Her jaw clenches tightly. 

Amelia doesn’t break eye contact with her as she hovers by her tail. She’s waiting and that drives Gura crazy. She’s tired of being a ticking time bomb. She wants to be normal. She wants to be that lovesick fish who likes surface girls again. 

Gently, Amelia cups her hands underneath her fin. What’s left of it. Gura swallows dryly. Amelia’s gaze drops down to the limb. She’s careful. Her hands are gentle. Gura’s heart feels like it’s going to explode. How can you love me like this? You know a better me in the future. Why waste your time here?

The prosthetic works strangely. It’s not fun. Amelia rubs a washcloth over her hurts and begins to loop threads around and around. Gura feels the tug. There is stinging pain there, but nothing as severe as stitches. She breathes. 

Amelia hums. 

Tentatively, Gura hums too. 

Amelia’s gaze briefly jumps up to her. Fathomless blues, sunset pink, a startling amount of knowing but just not enough to give, not enough for Gura to take. She’s a measuring cup that won’t let herself be emptied. She won’t be filled. 

Gura knows that’s her fault. 

She waits. She waits until Amelia has finished until the final thread is slotted through and carefully woven. She flexes her tail and goosebumps break out over her arms when she feels both fins move. Euphoria is quick. Wistfulness is quicker. 

She reaches her hand out emploringly. 

Amelia smiles. There’s a touch of shyness to the way she lays her hand in Gura’s palm. What is trust? Gura thinks it’s Amelia trusting her like this. She thinks about it reverently as she draws that hand to her lips. It was more than a test. It felt like a declaration. She presses her lips to Amelia’s knuckles, not her fangs. It means something. 

Amelia sounds breathless, “Feel better?” 

“Will it work?” Gura asks, too afraid to look up. Her face felt hot. 

“I made it.” Amelia huffs. “It damn well should, since you’ve already-” She cuts herself off. Despite that, Gura can piece it together. She feels her tail wag. The extra weight on it was a reminder. Maybe not so much a reminder anymore, but a promise. 

Amelia takes her out to where the waves kiss the shore. She takes off her shoes and pulls her hair back into a ponytail. She looks pretty. She takes Gura’s hand tenderly and leads her, step by step. Gura feels like she should be miffed. She was born in the ocean. She doesn’t need a crutch. 

She doesn’t mind at all when Amelia trips. She flails, her expression alight with laughter. Gura doesn’t know what comes over her. She’s surging forward. She presses her hands against Amelia’s shoulders and pushes. They both go down in a tangle of limbs. The ocean roars in her ears. It’s a blur of blue. Seafoam colors dye her world in shades of home. She breathes. 

Amelia is looking up at her with sparkling eyes. She’s grinning, even while she’s pinned down under the water, she shines with ferocity. Were you ever really afraid of me? Even once? Gura can’t help but smile, fondness swelling in her chest unexpectedly. The future felt too beautiful to swallow, but the present was just delicious enough to taste. 

Amelia tastes like strawberries.

Maybe that’s something between Gura’s teeth, but that’s a faraway thought, far gone beyond the hands that comb through her hair. She feels like she’s melting. She can feel Amelia smiling against her lips. There’s a brief tremble to them. Gura doesn’t want this to end. Not even for a moment. When they breach, things will have to be said and they’ll have to talk and she’ll feel icky and-

For now, she wants to love. She wants this moment. The one second, she’ll take for herself. 

Amelia lets her. 

Gura tilts her head and breathes. Amelia startles, but she’s adapting far too quickly for this to be her first underwater kiss. The thought exhilarates Gura. Sand is their curtain and the ocean spray feels like a roar of applause in her ears. Amelia doesn’t let go. Gura wants to devour her. 

When they finally surface for air, Amelia leans on her for support. The blonde is gasping, her whole body trembling. There’s a wild look in her eyes. Gura’s face feels numb from how hot it is. Her arms are looped around Amelia’s hips. She feels like she’s going to die. 

“Well,” Amelia gasps out, “We should probably, test the, the pros- Ah, fuck it.” And she’s looping her arms around Gura’s neck and drawing her down again. Gura laughs, bewildered by that, but not at all complaining about round two. The taste is too much to turn down. 

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A backpack is Amelia’s last gift for her. 

Gura doesn’t understand it at first. She holds it with confusion. It’s blue-tinted. There’s a scratch over one of the top zippers. Gura brushes her thumb over it. The backpack was not new. There was a strange container in one of the pouches. 

“That’s a water bottle,” Amelia explains. She’s reaching over Gura’s hands to unzip one of the pouches. “It has a flippable cap so you can use the cap as a cup if you need to. In here I put some medicine, I labeled them, just the read the instructions and-”

“Why do you sound like you’re saying goodbye?” Gura asks. 

Amelia looks up at her through her lashes. She fiddles with the zipper, “... I’ll be around.” 

Gura frowns. She doesn’t know how to feel. She doesn’t own Amelia, but this Amelia isn’t as tied to her as she is to the future. That’s a painful note to grasp, one Gura didn’t realize would be painful. A familiar anger crawls up her spine. It’s a fleeting thing. She feels more drained than anything. 

“...Is the future nice?” Gura asks quietly. 

Amelia hesitates. Her fingers dance up the zipper to touch Gura’s knuckles. Gura watches their journey. Her chest pangs for something. She wants Amelia to be hers. She doesn’t like the idea of being a pity trip. 

“In the future,” Amelia whispers, “We live together.”

Gura’s fingers dig into the backpack. She doesn’t know if she wants to hear that. Her heart is a traitor that leaps and sighs. Amelia watches her reaction carefully. 

“In the future,” Amelia whispers, “We kiss like that.” 

Like that-

Gura’s lips feel like fire. She meshes them into a thin line. It drives her crazy to see Amelia’s eyes zero in on the move. The blonde clears her throat. 

“Do I love you?” Gura asks desperately. 

Amelia counters, “Do you?”

Gura looks away. The weight on her tail reminds her and draws her back. Her heartstrings are attached. Her hurts feel too raw. They’re healed but she feels it underneath her skin. 

“In the future, do I love you?” Gura asks again. 

Amelia offers a half smile, “Do you?”

Annoyed, Gura bites out, “No.” 

“Well,” Amelia says. She doesn’t say anything more, mischief painting her smile as she backs off. Gura cradles the backpack close to her chest. Amelia folds her hands behind her back. The impish gleam in her eyes doesn’t look innocent at all. “I guess you’ve gotta decide that for yourself.”

“But you already know.” 

“But you don’t.” 

Gura sighs loudly, “I just want to know.” 

Amelia looks away. Her smile is small now, “I’m afraid you won’t be my Gura if you know too much.”

“What does that mean? I’m not your Gura.”

“You are.” Amelia smiles demurely. “It doesn’t matter where or when you are. You’re my Gura no matter what.”

Heat crawls up her neck. Gura breathes. Amelia, she’s learning, has the uncanny ability to reach under her ribs and squeeze her heart. She doesn’t know what to say. A stretch of quiet between them leads Amelia to step closer. She’s being daring. It makes Gura’s tail wag. 

Amelia reaches out to tuck Gura’s bangs behind her hair, “You do understand that, right? I’m not doing this to feel better. I’m not doing this because that’s something I know I need to do. It’s because you’re here and you need help and I want to be that help.”

“Ame,” Gura whispers.

Amelia ducks her head shyly, “I don’t wanna be some hero to you, or some prophet or whatever, no I just, I wanna be-” She cuts herself off. She’s making a quiet noise in her throat. Gura chases after her. She’s nudging aside hands and reaching up to take the red tie in her fist and-

Amelia smiles at her, her nose touching Gura’s, “Hey.”

“Will I see you?”

“If you’re looking for me, yeah.” 

Gura exhales, “You’re infuriating.” 

“I like to think I’m cool.” Amelia laughs quietly. “I’m just nervous.”

“Nervous I won't find you?”

“Nervous you don’t want to.” 

Gura tilts her head. A small kiss. Amelia sighs against her lips. Her eyes fluttered closed and Gura thinks that's tragically pretty. It doesn’t feel like goodbye. She’s afraid to ask how long she has to wait. Is it technically waiting if she’s searching?

“Will you help?” Gura asks tremendously, “A little bit?”

Amelia tilts her head away, mischief in her smile, “A little bit?”

Gura’s heart thuds. She can feel her tail wagging but Amelia is noticing it this time. Her eyebrows are raising. Gura says, “Stop looking.”

“A little bit?’ Amelia repeats.

“Not even a tiny bit.” Gura shoves her. The playfulness, the affection of it, startles Gura. She wasn’t expecting that from herself. Amelia laughs into it. She’s unaffected. Gura can’t help but laugh as well. She feels just a little freer like that. 

“I’ll drop some hints,” Amelia promises, her grin too wide to be anything but devious. 

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Goodbye begins with Amelia holding her hand. 

Gura thinks she’s starting to like it. The upset remains inside her don’t turn and growl when Amelia brushes her thumb about Gura’s knuckles. She feels alive. When she looks out onto the ocean, she feels small. 

“I think I should preface all this with like,” Amelia waves her free hand around nervously, “You don’t need to… not everyday look for me, I don’t want it to be about me, I-”

“Too late for that,” Gura grumbles. 

Amelia looks away, “I can’t tell you what to do. I know- well, it doesn’t matter what I know or what you’ve told me in the future. You mold yourself into how you want to be. I don’t want to force a blueprint on you.”

Gura shifts on her feet. The sand is itching between her toes. The backpack is a strange weight on her shoulders. Acclimating to the surface air and its gravity was still a step-by-step process for her. When her tail brushes her ankles, she feels goosebumps every time she recognizes both fins there. 

“What if I’m scared?” Gura asks. She doesn’t take her eyes off the ocean and its roaring tide. “What if I want a blueprint?”

“Then I’ll tell you. I’ll give you a nudge in the right direction.” Amelia’s voice drops with caution. “If you want it.”

Does she want it? Gura feels like every step between them had already been mapped out. Amelia knew that. Gura had been led along already, she was not sure she wants the future to be mapped out as well. There was a Gura waiting for this Amelia, her, future her with all the answers and had everything figured out. 

Gura thinks she might hate her. 

“Not right now,” Gura admits quietly. “Is it… even possible for you to visit?”

“I can find you,” Amelia promises. 

Gura looks at her. The blue of Amelia’s eyes is electric. There’s that ferocity there, lightning between the sand. Gura feels like it’s impossible, but with Amelia wearing an expression like that, she isn’t so sure. What’s the entire world versus Amelia’s determination? 

With gentle hands, Amelia leads her out to the surf. The prosthetic works. Amelia doesn’t look surprised about this at all. Gura tests it on waves, letting herself float. She uses it as a rudder, tiny flicks of her tail moving her forward. It feels like it takes more strength to swim now. She tires easily. 

“Where will you go?” Amelia asks, saltwater dripping down her nose. Gura will never get tired of wet, bedraggled Amelia. It’s a beautiful sight. When Amelia gathers her hair up into a ponytail, it takes everything not to sigh wantingly. 

“How does Atlantis look?” Gura asks. 

Amelia pauses. She doesn’t say anything for a second, as if she’s putting the words together in her head. Were you not expecting me to go back? 

“Not…terrible.” Amelia murmurs. “Do you… are you sure you…” She trails off. 

Gura breathes. What would she find in that red sea? What was left for her down there? She’d be prodding open a wound that was just showing signs of healing. For what? She wasn’t looking for closure down there. She doesn’t want to see family or friends, what’s left of them anyway. She wants-

“Is the surface nice?” Gura asks meekly. She feels embarrassed for even asking. “Like, uh, not the weather but the people, are they nice?” 

“Sometimes,” Amelia says. “I think it depends. It’s not really different from your home. There are good fish and bad fish. You might get looked at strangely for the tail, but there’s a lot crazier stuff going on up here.” 

Gura laughs weakly, “Crazier than me?”

“Oh yeah.” Amelia smiles, mischief curling at her lips. With the ocean falling off her, Gura feels like she’ll find no greater treasure. It hasn’t set in yet that Amelia is leaving. This sight is a treasure and one she won’t have for very long. 

Wistfully, she looks out at the ocean. I won’t have you for very long either. 

“Gura?” There’s a note of concern in Amelia’s voice. 

“I’ll miss you,” Gura admits. She doesn’t know if she’s talking to Amelia or her home. I’m crazy, Amelia’s crazy, there are crazier things out there, the whole damn world is crazy- is it so bad to be crazy in love? Can I let that happen when it does? Am I ready? 

“There’s always tomorrow,” Amelia says. 

Gura huffs, “What’s that supposed to mean?” She doesn’t get an answer. Miffed, she turns her head to scrutinize the blonde. The sight that greets her is an empty beach. Two pairs of footprints trail down the sands to where Gura stands. It’s just her standing in the shallows, the only evidence Amelia was ever there is the supplies on her back and the gift stitched to her tail. 

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Amelia’s first gift is a box lunch. 

Of course it is. 

Gura finds it on a rock. She stares at it for a long time. She was adjusting to the surface still. Being alone left her sore. At the same time, she felt like a door was opening for her. She walks curiously. When she spots her lunch waiting for her on a rock, Gura smiles dryly. 

“You couldn’t have given it to me yourself?” Gura asks. 

The road is different. The world is different. Inside her lunch box, it's a sandwich of ham and cheese. There are crackers arranged around a dipping sauce. A packet of juice. Strawberries. 

It's a comfortable meal. Loneliness isn't a stale taste. Its crackers stuck to the roof of her mouth as she ventures her way through her first town. It's awkward. Humans operate so much differently yet not so different at all. The buildings grow through thousands of stones. The roads are matted from horse hooves. Mildew burns her nose. The scratchy linen of the bed at the inn is her first night. Low-burning lanterns and melted wax candles. Weather-beaten windows.  She experiences thunder for the first time and hates it. She spends those nights huddled in the back of her closet. When she crawls out in the morning, a lunch box is waiting for her. She's alone, but she survives. 

Humans treat her at a distance. She's not them. She's from the sea. She has sharp teeth and a tail and claws. They give her a wide berth. It's not bullying, but it makes Gura frown. 

She wakes up and finds a fresh, fluffy blanket draped over her. She thinks, for an absurd moment, that one of the workers at the inn walked into her room. It was locked though. She notices the puppy paw print design on the blanket and cracks a grin. 

"What?" She whispers to the blankets, "No kiss goodnight?"

A traitorous thought occurs. She thinks about Amelia tucking her into bed, her hand brushing back Gura's bangs to give her a kiss on the forehead. Gura touches that spot and burns. 

She travels. The sun hangs low in darker months. She sits in trees and tries to smoke for the first time. She spits it out. The next day, she finds a note on her tree scolding her. She treasures it in her pocket for months until rain soaks the words away. 

The world is in her palm. Bird cries wake her up, bewildered by the noise. She sees deer from her campsite at times. She watches the grass in the breeze. The rustle of leaves. The crackle of her fire. Heat and cold, dirt and mud, leaf and grass, there's so much. She experiences it and sighs. 

Her mornings have her waking up with groggy eyes and watching the empty space beside her. Bird song pulls her until she gets up. She stretches. She makes herself breakfast. She lives. 

Amelia leaves her a fork. Gura laughs hard enough her stomach hurts the whole day.

Gura is a ship in a glass bottle. She realizes this as humans move from horses to little buggy cars. She doesn't age as quickly. They age fast and so too does their technology. It grows. It's a constantly flowing river. Gura bobs along, taking it in with watchful eyes. She's on the other side of the glass. Everything she looks at she compares to a home long ago. 

The cities grow tall. She feels smaller, a tiny speck shrinking in a world that’s reaching for the stars. Gura watches it all. She stands on a sidewalk, her hood up as rain patters against her head. She’s been through dozens of backpacks. The one against her back has fish designs.

She’s trying to figure out how a phone works. 

A job is weird but it’s a job. It’s changed and molded over the years. She does mail deliveries. She works in a bakery. She drifts for a few years. In the next decade, she’s doing pizza deliveries. When she holds a flat cellular device in her hands, she immediately forgets the password. Rain is getting on the screen too. She mumbles under her breath as she swipes at it with her thumb. She feels older than her bones. 

Wiser, too, as a streak of yellow catches her attention. 

In this rain-wrapped city, she’s used to catching ghosts. A grin lost in the crowd. A yellow coat dashing between cars. A sly detective evading her, leaving her crumbs, yet never quite there. An intangible dream that falls between her fingers. Gura can never stop smiling when she catches these moments.  

This Amelia is across the street has her eyes glued to her phone. Gura watches her. Never, not ever, has Amelia stood around long enough for Gura to see her let alone stare at her. Amelia for all the world didn’t look like she was on the run. Her brow was pinched. The bill of her hat hung low over her face. The rain dripping off of it obscures the blue of her eyes. 

Gura watches. When the light turns green, she doesn’t walk. Amelia crosses the street, her gaze glued to her phone. Gura leans just enough that when they pass each other by, she bumps against Amelia’s shoulders.

Amelia mutters, “Excuse me.” And doesn’t stop. She keeps walking, her gaze downcast. Her coat flares out behind her. Gura watches her go, a flag in the midst of the rain, something tight in her throat and coiling in her chest. When Amelia disappears into the crowd, it feels different this time. It feels real.

What should she do?

What is the best medicine for centuries of teasing?

Gura grins. 

Revenge. 

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Amelia falls in love with the most irritating girl in the world. 

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There’s a girl from the sea. 

Amelia isn’t very much phased by that. She has a growing list of notes as she continues her mythical investigation. She sat with a demon for an interview. She’s traveled to visit robots from abandoned futures. She’s investigated the odd and the uncanny. Ina was first because the Ancient Ones were interesting and the occult was kind of fun to poke at and see if it squirms. Kiara was next. A phoenix was a crazy discovery but Amelia thinks she may have ruptured a kidney from laughing so hard the moment she discovered who the CEO of KFP was. Calli, of course, reaps said phoenix occasionally and Amelia had a daring escapade with stolen wine. They were friendly and fun. 

The shark girl? She’s a real piece of work. 

Amelia was doing her investigation in groups. She wasn’t lumping them together but it was happening naturally as their interview times sorta overlapped. Now, Kiara will spring into the office and rope Ina in for tea. It’s nice. Amelia likes it when it becomes less of an investigation and more of something warm and comfortable. 

So, groups. She figured four was a nice number. Pairs, ya know. 

Except for the shark girl always shows up late. When she called for the first interview, Gura’s voice was muted and awkward. Amelia felt sympathetic. She didn’t want anyone to be uncomfortable. It was fun! It felt like an adventure and she wanted the others to feel like it too.

The next day her voicemail tells her Gura can’t make it. Amelia’s shoulders droop. Did I spook her off? She tries again. Her second phone call goes sideways. 

Gura is less awkward. There’s a lilt to her voice that Amelia can’t identify as she says, “Oh, yeah, I can totally do an interview.”

“What time works best for you?” Amelia offers. 

“3 AM.” 

Amelia deadpans. She takes a moment to rub her hand over her face before saying in a bright tone, “That late, huh? You a night owl?”

“Is that too much for you?” Gura asks. It sounds less like a question. There’s a dangerous edge to it that has Amelia sitting up straighter. 

“I can do that time no problem.” What was she, a time traveler? She can just go early and get sleep anyway. It really was no problem. “Do you still know the address for-”

“Yeah, yeah,” Gura says dismissively. The line goes dead. Amelia slowly blinks as her fingers curl around her phone. 

Irritating. 

It gets worse. An hour later she finds herself time-traveling to 3 AM. She checks the doors to make sure they’re unlocked. She leaves a light on, but not all of them, because if she’s sleeping right now she doesn’t want to wake herself up. She sits at her desk and waits. 

Ten minutes pass. She idles her time drawing on her documents. Twenty minutes pass and she starts tapping her finger on her phone. No messages. No missed calls. 

4 AM hits and she calls Gura. She gets immediately sent to voice mail. She tries not to be annoyed. It’s late, but maybe Gura fell asleep. That wouldn’t be farfetched. Maybe she’s still spooked. Another ten minutes pass and she turns out the light. In the next moment, she’s several hours back in the present. She’ll tackle all that later, she figures. She hangs up her coat and hat and gets ready for bed. 

She wakes up to a loud knocking at her door. Bubba’s yipping from her living room. She groggily leans forward. Her room is dark. From outside the window, the streetlights flare brightly. It’s late. Her alarm clock tells her it’s not even midnight. She’s only been out for a few hours. 

Wearily, she climbs out of bed. The nighttime chill grips her and she hisses as she prances on her feet. She didn’t wear pajamas and she’s paying for that. She ducks into the bathroom to grab a towel. 

“Bubba.” She mumbles. He yips a few more times. “Shush, it’s late.”

Whoever is at her door, they’re still knocking. It’s a heavy knock too. Amelia frowns. No one knocked like that at this hour without purpose, without intent. She cautiously approaches the door. Just to be safe, she grabs the baseball bat propped against the door frame. When she looks through the peephole, she sees wispy white hair obscuring her vision. 

Amelia blinks. Bewildered, she cracks open her door. 

Gura stands there. She’s wearing a blue jacket, the sleeves blocky white as she lowers them down to stuff her hands into her pockets. She’s casual. She looks nothing like the awkward mess Amelia was expecting. She’s also incredibly self-conscious that she’s standing naked in a towel with a bedhead. She lowers the bat awkwardly.

“Uh,” Amelia says. 

“I’m here for my interview.” Gura chirps. Her smile is a lazy curl on her lips, just a hint of sharp teeth. “You look snazzy.” 

Amelia feels her neck burning, “What? It’s not 3 AM.”

“Oops,” Gura says. “Well, since I’m here, no time like the present, right? ” The severity of that word drops like nails. Amelia bristles, feeling affronted but not understanding why. There was no way she could conduct an interview like this. She’s about to turn her away when Gura nudges her door open with her shoulder. Amelia sputters. 

Gura coos as she crouches down to pat Bubba. Bubba soaks up the attention with happy yips. “Aw, who’s a good boy? Look at you.” Gura glances up at Amelia slyly, “So well behaved.”

Amelia’s jaw tightens. Irritating. 

“My office is that way.” Amelia points. To her frustration, Gura is going the complete opposite way and is heading for the kitchen.

“That’s nice,” Gura says. “Got any snacks?” 

Amelia makes a strangling motion with her hands. When Gura glances over her shoulder to look at her, Amelia snaps her arms behind her back. She’s hyper-aware of just a towel covering her as she stammers out, “Sure. Snacks. That works.” Whatever gets you out quicker. 

Gura grins. Amelia isn’t sure she likes it. 

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Amelia doesn’t trust to leave Gura alone with her things, but she’s left with no choice. She sets Gura up with something to eat before scampering to her room for a change of clothes. She stumbles and knocks herself against furniture as she does. A yawn tears through her throat as she pulls down the cuffs of her sleeves. 

Sleepy. She balefully eyes the door of her room. Can I just send her home or something?

She rubs her face as she walks back out. Gura had more than made herself at home with her kitchen. Where Amelia had given her some chips, now Gura had the kettle going. Amelia bristles. She didn’t want someone touching her things. Gura’s tail is swaying back and forth as she sets the kettle aside. 

Amelia watches grumpily. There’s a grace to how Gura confronts the kitchen, almost as if it’s her natural habitat. She glances through the cupboards before she takes out two cups. Honey fills the air. Gura pours tea into the cups. 

Amelia stares. Her anger is dissipating, a warmth wrapping around her heart as Gura approaches her. She offers the second cup. Amelia mumbles a thank you as she cups it in her hands. Gura is smiling, looking pleased with herself as she takes a seat at the table. Not sure what else to do and feeling not so confident anymore, Amelia sits across from her. 

“So, how do these work?” Gura drawls. She blows on her tea as she says, “You just ask me questions?”

Typically, it’d be in her office where she can easily search for relevant information. She’d have her laptop ready to go and a notebook primed to take down every detail. If she needs facts, her desk drawers had heaps of them from over many centuries. Here at her dining table? She has a cup of tea. 

Well. Amelia miserably takes a sip. I guess it’ll be easier to start off gently anyway. 

“Yeah, I ask some questions. Nothing too hard-hitting, not right off the bat.” Amelia explains. She makes sure she sounds like that’s exactly how she intended for this to go. “They’re really simple, actually.”

Gura raises an eyebrow, “What? Don’t wanna dissect me for my secrets?” 

“I don’t wanna be a cop.” Amelia shrugs. She smiles helplessly. “I just- well, this is fun. I like doing this and discovering new things. I want it to be fun for everyone involved, not just me. I don’t wanna treat any of you like you’re just, I dunno, notes on a page.” I wanna be friends sounds way too corny right now. She occupies her lips with her tea. 

Gura’s expression is tender. Amelia hadn’t seen that before, the mellowing out of the tense jaw and the softening of her eyes. There was a phantom smile on her face. It’s barely there. 

“Yeah, I know.” Gura murmurs. “It’s nice to know that hasn’t ch-... it’s just nice to know.” 

Amelia shyly glances away, “If the questions ever become too much you-”

“Oh please.” Gura sighs. “Just ask them already.” 

“What’s your favorite color?”

Gura looks like she just sucked a lemon, “Really? That’s it? It’s blue.” 

Amelia offers a smile as she mentally takes that down, “See? Nothing hard-hitting. We’re just getting to know each other.”

Gura raises an eyebrow. Her lips are curling deviously, “Okay. What’s the next one?”

“What’s your favorite video game?”

“Oblivion.” 

Amelia blinks. I wasn’t expecting that. “That’s mine too.” 

“Uh-huh.” Gura drawls. She looks smug about this. She rolls her shoulders and throws her arms up into a stretch. Her sleeves fall down a little and Amelia has a view of taut muscle and scarred knuckles. Her throat feels dry. Gura says,  “We could make this more exciting, ya know.”

“What?” Amelia asks. 

Gura’s eyes are shining with mischief. She holds up her hand to show off five fingers, “Every day you can ask me five questions. That’s the max, no more. Five questions a day.” 

Amelia’s brow furrows. That felt extreme for a bunch of little information questions. Something must have shown on her face. Gura’s grin shows teeth as she says, “You’d be up to the challenge, right?”

Amelia’s fingers curl tightly around her teacup, “Yeah. No problem.”

“No problem, huh?” Gura whistles. “You have three more questions. I mean, if they’re even valid questions. These feel like personality quiz questions.” She snorts and says sweetly, “Can you tell me which character from my favorite movie I am?” 

Feeling less gentle, Amelia asks, “Is your hair white because you’re old?”

Gura sputters, her bravado gone in an instant. She gives an affronted squeak that nearly sends her tea into her lap. The glare she’s sending Amelia’s way is cute. Amelia feels the urge to smile and stamps it down. 

“I’m sorry, is aging a crime?” Gura snaps. “Yeah, I’m a silver fox. Be jealous, you’ll look ugly and weird when you’re older.” 

Amelia wrinkles her nose, “Yeah, okay. What kinda shampoo do you use?”

“Sewage water to cure my raging arthritis.” 

Amelia deadpans. 

Gura leans back in her chair like she owns every inch of this apartment. Amelia can almost imagine a crown on top of her dumb head. Gura sings, “One more question. What will it be? I’m dying to know.” 

“Okay,” Amelia says crisply. “Can you get out of my house?”

The shark yelps. She’s righting the chair in an effort not to fall. Bubba thinks it's play time and paws at the chair. Amelia gets a spectacular view of her shark guest somersaulting backward. Nonplussed, she takes a sip of tea. 

Gura looks up over the table wearily, “No dice, huh?”

“Next time,” Amelia says. “You show up at noon. Capiche?”

“And not keep you on your toes?” Gura sets her chin on her table. Her smile is lazy. Her eyes are half-lidded. Amelia feels her face grow warm. Why are you looking at me like that? “Not a chance, defecto detecto.”

Amelia groans. 

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Amelia can’t get rid of her. 

Every day throughout her activities, Gura appears whenever she pleases and never when she’s wanted. Amelia thought she made it clear. The time was important, she’s a time traveler, and time was always important! When she says noon, not a second early or late, she’s alone at her desk for a full hour before throwing her hands into her hair and going out to get lunch. 

She’s steamed. I just want to get along! What’s your problem?

Amelia rubs her temples. She’s getting too worked up about it. The convenience store around her chimes with music muffled by an old mic system. There are not many people in here and she doesn’t have to maneuver around them and utter apologies. She stands in front of canned soup and frowns. 

What should I do?

She wanted to be on Gura’s good side, obviously. For some reason Gura had her feathers ruffled and Amelia isn’t sure if that’s her fault or if Gura’s naturally driven to drive everyone she knows up the wall. The best bet would be to try and introduce her to someone else, like Ina, Ina is good. They’re both aquatic too. That might make her happy. 

If she’s just an asshole Amelia might elbow her in the neck. 

The problem with that is Gura doesn’t show up. Amelia grabs tomato soap and mutters a swear under her breath when she notices a dent. She puts it back. So, what can she do that she can do? Limited. It’d rely entirely on having Gura show up when she was expected which, at this point, was a toss-up. 

Amelia was a detective though and she didn’t back down from a challenge. 

What was the first thing Gura did when entering her apartment? She headed for the kitchen. It’d fit with the shark pretty well to think with her stomach. Amelia considers other cans but figures carnivores wouldn’t be fans of vegetables and peaches. She didn’t know what Gura liked. She notes that down as a question to ask. 

She finds the raw meats at the store. 

Gura is casually there. She has her hands stuffed in her pockets. A large saw-toothed yawn shows her disinterest in it. Amelia nearly stumbles. She wasn’t expecting to see Gura. She must have made a noise, or as she suspects, Gura knew she was there. The shark tilts her head over her shoulder to look at her. She doesn’t react in the slightest. 

“Huh,” Gura says. She slides her gaze back to the meat. 

Amelia hovers awkwardly. Be nice. “Uh, hey Gura. Shopping?”

“Yuh.” Gura drawls. Her tail is lazily swaying back and forth. Amelia notices the darker part of the fin for the first time. It was hard to make out in sunlight, but in the dim lights of the store, it stood out just enough. 

“Did you forget about our interview?” Amelia asks pointedly. 

“What interview?” The shark grumbles. “I’m hungry.”

Amelia forces down the tension in her shoulders. She says sweetly, “Would you like to have lunch with me then? We can catch up.”

She has Gura’s attention at that. The shark slouches over to her side. Amelia thinks she’s trying to feign disinterest. There’s a gleam in her eye. Amelia tries not to smile. 

“What’s cookin’, Watson?” Gura prods. 

“I was thinking about making some beef stew,” Amelia says conversationally. She keeps her tone light. Not plotting, not at all. “Would you like some of that?”

“Maybe.”

“Maybe?”

“Could go for something else.” Gura muses. She doesn’t elaborate. Instead, she stretches as she says, “Wow, you’re making this question thing easy, Watton. You’re already down to one question.”

Amelia scoffs, “Hey, c’mon, that was just conversation, you weren’t even being interviewed! That’s totally cheating!”

“What interview?” Gura asks. The doe eyes weren’t working on Amelia. The detective crosses her arms. She feels annoyed, but when Gura starts to smile like that, like Amelia did something adorable, Amelia mellows. She doesn’t like the switch flipping so often. Gura is sweet and distant at the same time. Amelia isn’t sure how she should be reacting. Was getting angry overdramatic for teasing?

Helplessly, Amelia mutters, “Do you even like me?” 

Gura stares at her. Her smile is a slow-growing thing, something planted for years and nurtured for centuries. A little disbelieving laugh follows. It sounds wild. Amelia can’t piece it together. She has no idea why someone would look at her like that, like she hung the moon and the stars and had the gal to ask why someone liked that. 

“Yeah,” Gura whispers, so quietly fragile Amelia feels like she’s intruding on something. “I like you.” 

Absurdly flustered, Amelia looks away. She can’t look at that gooey expression. There are fourteen Amelias running around in her head screaming as several things go up in flames. What the hell was that? Are you messing with me? Don’t wear such an expression if you don’t even want to meet up!

“So,” Amelia says through a dry throat, “Lunch then?”

Gura ducks her head, a rosy hue to her cheeks. She kicks her feet as she says, “Sorry chief. You’re all capped out on questions.”

Feeling betrayed, Amelia reaches out and grabs one of the salmon filets. It’s not what she wants to make, but she doesn’t want to fidget and she doesn’t want to stay. She shouldn’t feel so hurt by such an inane comment, she should be pretty used to Gura’s antics by now. It only frustrates her more. She turns and walks away. She thinks that’s the end of it until she gets in line to check out and Gura saddles up beside her. 

Amelia glances at her. 

Gura looks back, a devious shine to her eyes as she says, “I didn’t say anything about dinner.” 

Amelia takes it back. She wasn’t just going to elbow her in the throat. She was going to suplex her into four dimensions and leave her for wolves. It’s a fitting punishment for the heat gathering on her neck. 

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Chapter Text

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Is this a date?

Amelia tries to focus on making food. She has smoked salmon she’s prepping. Her kitchen smells crunchy. It smells like a warm restaurant with too many foods to smell but an aroma that's thick and hangs around her nose. It’s all because she panicked and now she has four dishes going on instead of one. 

Gura appears beside her. Wordlessly, the shark rolls up her sleeves to her elbows. Amelia is not expecting her to grab the pan off the oven top and start poking at it with a ladle. Flustered, Amelia rips open a bag of peanuts. 

Gura glances at her with amusement, fondness, “You inviting a whole party, Watson?”

“No.” Amelia petulantly pops a cashew into her mouth. There’s a half-finished platter of veggies she’s making that’s starting to look more and more like an appetizer entree instead of anything healthy. The fries in the corner looked absurd. “Just us.” 

“That’s nice.” Gura murmurs. She sets the pan off the stove and turns it off. 

They work side by side. Amelia doesn’t know why this is so startling or why it’s making her stumble around. She hasn’t had anyone in her kitchen before, not like this. When their fingers brush, Amelia feels her whole hand burn from the sensation. When the food is set at the table, Gura sits across from her. Her smile is far away. 

“You really haven’t changed.” Gura notes. 

Amelia stares at her. Slowly, she asks, “What do you mean?”

Gura glances up. A bead of weariness sways in her eyes. She’s occupying herself with her utensils. It was a deflection. There’s a mystery tugging at Amelia’s chest. Her tongue itches with questions. 

She’s feeling bold. She asks, “Have we met before?”

“... Yeah.” Gura jabs her fork at her plate. She stuffs a handful of mashed potato in her mouth. It’s another attempt at deflection. 

But now the hunt was on and it makes Amelia lean forward, “Sorry, I really don’t remember you. Where have we met?”

“On a rock,” Gura says. 

“What? Where?”

“In the ocean.”

Amelia fumes, “Can you give me, like, geographical location? You better not be lying.” 

Gura says sharply, “I wouldn’t lie about that.” She scoffs, her fork scratching at her plate as she says, “Maybe you would.”

“What?” Affronted, Amelia bites back, “Why would I lie?”

“Can I just eat my food in peace, man?” Gura laments.

“No, you know me!” Amelia accuses. She frowns now because this was starting to awfully tick at the time traveler side of things. Her brain was working fast. “We’ve met before, but I don’t know you. I’ll know you… later? We met before.” 

Gura pushes her chair out. Her expression is twisted, “Whatever. I’m not hungry.” 

“Hey!” Amelia stands at the same time as Gura. The shark is nudging her chair out of the way with her foot. Amelia grips the table to stop herself from flying over it and throttling her. Instead, she forces out that agitation in a big breath and tries for peace, “Look, if you’re frustrated that I don’t know you but knew you, I’m sorry, but that comes with being a time traveler.”

The look Gura shoots her is lethal. Gura’s frozen, halfway into stepping away from the table. She says flatly, “That’s it? That’s really it, huh? I’m sorry? For one thousand years-” Her voice rises. She cuts herself off, breathing heavily and biting out, “For centuries I waited on you. You said, you told me to live for myself and I did do that, but I wanted to do that with-”

Amelia stares. She feels horrified. Gura is a volcano of anger and frustration, but between that, there’s a glimmer of tears there. Her future self has gone to the past for Gura. Why? It didn’t make sense to her. She doesn’t have any reason to go back and toy with Gura like that. 

Does she really piss me off that badly? Amelia frowns. She feels self-conscious about her agitation now. No, she’s a nice girl. She’s irritating, but she’s fun. 

“I don’t understand.” Gura seethes. She’s rubbing her hands over her face. “I really don’t. You standing there with your mouth hanging open is just pissing me off.” 

Amelia bristles, her earlier anger flying back to her, “Okay, first of all, fuck you. Second of all, I’m a time traveler, not a time freaking keeper. If I visited you in the past it was for a damn good reason.”

“Yeah what?” Gura snaps. “You couldn’t have hung around?”

“I only have one life!” Amelia barks back, “Get that through your head! I can’t live a century being your tagalong little-” 

Gura kicks the table. Amelia flinches, but it’s more out of surprise than anything. Anger burns up her shoulders and makes her clench her hands into fists. Gura’s jaw is tense. Her face is stony.

“Was it a pity trip?” Gura asks, her voice thick with emotion. 

Amelia throws her hands up in the air, “Well, fuck! Do you want it to be? It hasn’t even happened yet! I certainly wouldn’t go back in time just to make fun of you, or pity you, or, or some other malicious thing. I wouldn’t!” Hurt is churning in her tummy and the need to prove herself has her grabbing her watch from her pocket. She presents it, her fingers instinctively clicking the hatch to open it. 7:03 the time says. 

“We can swear on this if you want,” Amelia says. “I’ll swear never to go back and talk to you. You’ll never see me or hear from me.” 

Gura looks spooked. Her eyes are wide, “What does that mean?”

Technical jargon. Amelia thinks a lot of space and time will fly over Gura’s head. She’s not in the mood for a technical talk. She mumbles, “The timeline will patch itself up. If I made a wound on it, then we can fix it by having me never go back in time. Because the wound is fixed, things will shift to accommodate that. Your memories will shift. You won’t even notice it.”

“Will I forget you?” Gura asks. She’s eyeing the watch like it’s a bomb. 

“... I mean, probably,” Amelia mutters. “That’s what you want though, right?” 

“What?” Gura looks at her like her head just started rotating. She looks aghast, “What, no! I don’t want to forget all that!” 

Amelia helplessly lets her hands fall back to her sides, “Then I don’t know what you want. If it’s that much of a problem then maybe we shouldn’t even talk to ea-”

“Just shut up!” Gura rubs her sleeve over her face. Amelia slouches further. She hadn’t meant to make her cry. “You don’t get it at all.”

Amelia stands quietly. She doesn’t get it and it’s frustrating. She can see that frustration reflected in Gura. Soundlessly, she’s pushing in her chair. She stands behind it like it’s a shield. It doesn’t do anything to assuage the guilt she feels at Gura’s tears. I didn’t even do anything! This sucks!

Gura sniffles. She’s wiping at her tears with her sleeve and she moves away from the table. She bumps her shoulder against the wall. Amelia watches her keenly. Gura pauses at the corner. 

“... Thanks for dinner, Ame.” She mutters. 

Amelia watches her leave. It’s only when she hears the front door softly click shut does she let her head fall into her hands. 

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Chapter Text

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How do you rewrite history?

Better yet, how does she even begin to fix this mess? Amelia is a little miffed it’s not even her fault to begin with. Despite this, guilt is eating at her shoulders. She feels unsettled. She can’t focus on her work. She feels like something is unfinished. It’s driving the detective inside her to scream and wail. 

After an hour of it, she tosses her pencil down. It clatters across her desk. Amelia doesn’t care. She rubs her face with her hands. 

What am I supposed to do?

She can’t work like this. With a sigh, she stands from her desk and makes her way out of her office. Bubba had been lounging by her doorway. He perks up when she passes by. She feels better after she fixes herself some tea. She curls up on the couch with half a mind to doze there. There’s a knock at the door before she can fully relax. 

Amelia sags. She’s not feeling very brave to confront Gura again. If it is her, she feels she at least owes some form of explanation. She asked for an interview first. She feels responsible, weirdly enough. Even though Gura has known beforehand she still feels like it’s her duty to keep the nature of her investigation light and fun. 

She doesn’t feel very cheerful as she opens the door. 

Immediately, hydrangeas are looming in her face. Amelia reels in surprise. Lavender and pink roses decorated the bouquet. Gura wields it awkwardly, her mouth swimming with emotions and her face flushed. 

“Uh.” Gura belts out. “Flowers. For you.” 

“What?” Amelia blinks at the bouquet in bewilderment. A tense coil in her chest loosens. Affection blooms there, surprised by this, wary of it, “Why?”

“Because-” Gura starts roughly like she’d been rehearsing her lines like this whole thing was something she stood in the mirror and hyped herself up over. She clears her throat, “Because I've been waiting centuries for you and I’m not gonna let it get away from me, not when I finally have it.”

Gura shyly looks away, her smile tilting sideways with fondness, “I was upset you don’t know me. I think, in my head, this whole time I was preparing for a girl who remembered me and all we did. You, you did so much for me and I was hoping we’d have a reunion, not an interview.”

Her future self was shaping up to be a piece of work. This was all sounding absurd. It was the kind of absurd that made Amelia’s head swim with hearts and left her heart racing to catch up.

Gura continues, “You don’t know me and I feel like I don’t know you. I realized we’re strangers that are blaming each other and I- I just don’t want to fight.”

“I don’t either,” Amelia adds weakly. 

“You kept me going despite all that. Over the centuries, over time, you sporadically helped me. I think I would have gone insane without you.” 

“Huh?” Amelia squeaks. Her face felt like molten lava. This was sounding eerily close to a confession, “I, I get what you mean by waiting on, but this all seems really drastic-”

Gura squirms like Amelia was poking at her ribs, “Stop, stop stop, I’m gonna get flustered and I’m gonna forget what I need to say.” 

“What?” Amelia says. Gura gives her a look and she goes quiet. 

“I’m- I’m not good at this.” Gura murmurs, her fingers twisting as she holds them close to her chest. “I’ve had years and years to fantasize about this but when I finally get it, I just- you don’t get it.”

“What am I supposed to get?”

The smile Gura gives her is profound enough to etch itself into her memories, “You haven’t figured it out yet, big brain detective?”

Amelia glances down at the flowers. Her pulse thunders in her ears. With shaking fingers, she reaches out to accept them. Gura’s gooey expression is making her legs weak. She’s starting to piece together a larger puzzle here. She thought her future self was acting maliciously. No, she was acting out of lo-

Amelia squeaks, high in her throat, and utterly mortified. Gura looks spooked too, “What? Do you not like the flowers?”

“No, no, I mean yes, I mean-” Amelia whines, turning her face away from where Gura was gawking at her, “Can you give me a day? I’ll get back to you in a day.” 

“A day?” Gura repeats airily. There’s an edge of wonder to it like Amelia just said something fantastic. “A day for…?”

“I- I don’t know.” 

“You do know.” Gura pokes at the center of her spine. Amelia bristles like a startled cat. She whirls around with every intent to snap at the girl, but Gura’s grin is bright and wonderful. She hasn’t seen the shark smile like that. 

“How about,” Gura says softly, “tomorrow, I stop by for lunch.” 

“Why lunch?” Amelia whispers. 

“I have an idea. Indulge me.” A short laugh follows as she tacks on, “I want to be happy. At the very least, I wanna be friends with you, Watson.”

“Me too.” 

“Will you talk to me at lunch tomorrow?” Gura asks, her voice centuries ago and fading.

Amelia’s mouth feels dry, “What will we talk about?”

“I don’t know,” Gura says whimsically. “But you got five attempts to figure it out. I'm sure you’ll manage.” 

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Chapter Text

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Amelia hasn’t been in love before. 

She’s a little confused about how it works. More importantly, she’s confused about how it works for a time traveler like her. It wasn’t a priority! Settling down? Falling in love? It all sounded insane to her. She was an adventurer, not a poet. 

Gura looks at her like she’s four times more than that. It itches at her skin. There’s something tense between them, something unexplored yet mapped out. Amelia thinks it over. She’s a little miffed to find love found her first, but she’s Amelia before she adheres to some bespoken rule of time travel. 

She’s not in love. 

But Gura pulls her chair out for her when they get together for lunch. She arrives on time. Gura looks less like a shadow is haunting her and more like she’s tucked that shadow under her arm, confidence and patience shining in her palm. 

In that palm is a strawberry. 

“What one?” Gura offers. She looks amused about it. 

Amelia isn’t mean. She’s hungry. The strawberry is sweet between her teeth. Gura talks about herself. She lives in an apartment, runs pizza deliveries and in her free time she practices singing. She has a few pet fish. She jokingly calls them emergency rations. 

Amelia laughs. She loosens up. She feels less like at any moment Gura will snap and fly off her hinges. She doesn’t want to fight. Gura doesn’t either from the relief shining in her eyes. They started off on rocks and finally made it to the sand bed. Now, it was just Amelia who needed to take the dive. 

She’s not ready for that. 

“I know I said,” Amelia’s words get tangled in her mouth, “Uh, yesterday, about today, about lunch, I don’t know, I’m just- you’ve waited so long so I just, I feel bad-”

Gura grimaces, “I should say sorry first. I just… lumped you with the Amelia I met.” 

“I mean, she’s still me,” Amelia says. She thinks that over and feels her cheeks burn, “Uh, maybe. Possibly.” 

“Still. I want to do this right.” Gura looks at her imploringly. Her eyes are an oasis of stars. “Wanna give this shark a chance?”

“A chance?” Amelia echoes warily, “I mean…”

“Nothing to it. Just let me…” Gura fights for her words. “Let me try. You don’t have to do much, I mean, you could try too but I guess if you want to, I mean, I’m not trying to force you I just-”

Amelia laughs. Gura’s hands were fluttering so much in front of her that she looked like she was a bug trying to take off for flight. The levity of this didn’t seem so bad with Gura that flustered. Amelia can’t help but smile. 

“Okay.” She whispers, afraid to say more. Her heart thuds already at the lone word. Okay, she says, cracking open the front door and leaving it open. It’s dangerous for her. The front door left open like that can invite pain. 

Gura doesn’t burst open. She takes hold of the doorknob by walking her home, her hand occasionally brushing Amelia’s. They chat and it’s not about their relationship. It’s not about time travel. Gura talks about the transit busting up and Amelia laughs and tells her to ride a bus. They get into a brief argument over that, but it’s not biting words. It’s playful banter. It nearly makes Amelia float off her feet. 

Gura cracks the door open slightly as she takes Amelia’s hand and bends down to give her knuckles a parting kiss. Amelia’s lungs are frozen. She feels like a statue. The only thing still moving is her heart and it’s screaming so loudly she thinks even Gura can hear it. The shark lingers, wistful, before pulling away with a smile that makes Amelia’s head go up in smoke. 

“Goodnight, Ame,” Gura says. 

“Goodnight, Gura.” Amelia echoes, too dazed to even raise her hand for a wave. 

Gura works her charm. She inches the door open, bit by bit. Inches would be generous actually. She’s going centimeters slowly. She visits Amelia in the office, a box of takeout cradled in her arms and a warm hello on her lips. They go to the park together. The arcade. Gura takes her to where she works, a homely pizzeria that serves handmade ice cream. 

Amelia got settled into the thyme of the door opening, bit by bit, only for Gura to pull the rug out from under her. She’s got blueberry ice cream running down her fingers as she tries to finish off her cone as quickly as possible. Gura has the appetite of a monster and had downed hers into three huge bites. 

“You’re an animal,” Amelia complains, frantically ducking her head to lick up what’s falling onto her hands. Her voice is muffled as she says, “What the hell, this is unfair.”

Gura is snickering, “Relax, just throw it away and I can get you a fresh one.”

“In this weather?” Amelia looks up at the sun disapprovingly, “No.” 

She doesn’t have much of a choice in the end. Her ice cream is turning into a running fountain. She mournfully dumbs it into a waste bin nearby. There were supposed to be paper towels on top of the bin, but the cardboard cylinder was a testament to how many more ice creams had met a cruel fate before hers. Amelia looks at her sticky hand and back to the trash with a frown. 

Gura appears at her side. Her eyes are on her phone as she says, “Can we drop by the convenience store on the way back? I need paper plates.”

“Sure.” Amelia mumbles. “I need napkins.” 

Gura looks at her. Brow furrowed, she drops her gaze to Amelia’s hand. Amelia is expecting her to laugh. Instead, Gura is reaching out and taking her hand by the wrist. Amelia is too surprised to react when Gura pulls her hand towards her and pops one of her fingers in her mouth. 

Amelia thinks she might die. She can’t conjure more than a solitary squeak. Her entire body is frozen. Gura goes rigid too, the situation catching up with her. Her eyes are wide. She lets go of Amelia’s hand like it burned her, her hand reaching up to clasp itself over her mouth. Amelia cradles her hand to her chest. One of her fingers felt warm. If she focuses on it too much, she feels like she’ll explode. 

“Uh.” Gura coughs. “Sorry.”

“Let’s just go get the plates.” Amelia rambles. She’s taking off down the road, her emotions dogging at her feet and chasing up her spine, “We, uh, we can pick up some dinner if you want.” 

It dispels the awkward air, at least a little. Gura relaxes with a small smile, “Sure. I’d love to have dinner with you.” 

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Chapter Text

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Amelia still works. Everything revolves in the same manner she had before anything absurd had upset it. She still wakes up, she feeds Bubba, she has breakfast while she looks over the latest news, she checks texts from her friends and calls them if they’re free, and she gets into her office for work. 

Now, Gura accompanies her. Dinner leaves them both halfway into a food coma and Amelia wants nothing more than to pass out. Gura looked the same. She helps Amelia with the dishes, which is nice. Amelia tries not to focus on how their fingers brush every time she hands her plate to put away. 

“Thanks for the help.” She says. 

Gura smiles at her. She seemed more centered than when they first met. She looked like she was riding on a nice dream, “No problem.” 

Amelia felt bad about having to make Gura walk home in the dark. She offers her couch. She brought out the spare blankets and wrangled a few of her pillows out for Gura. Gura accepts them shyly. 

“Wanna watch a movie?” Gura asks. 

“Out here?” Amelia eyes the couch swaddled in blankets, “I don’t wanna mess up your bed.”

“We can sit together. It’s fine, we can mess it up. I’ll get it when I go to bed.”

That sounded reasonable. Her heart didn’t want to be reasonable. She asks, “What kinda movie?”

“One of the new ones,” Gura says. “Can it be like, an action comedy or something?”

“Do you like those?”

“The jokes are funny. I just like laughing.”

Amelia can’t say no to that. She gets changed into pajamas and heads out with her own blanket tucked under her arm. Gura has set the movie already. She was frustrating over the remote, her lips pulled down into a frown. 

“How do I turn the volume up?”

“You use the arrows.”

“What? There’s no volume button.”

“Nah, that’s an old remote.” 

Gura scoffs. She moves over and Amelia hesitates. That was a clear invitation. It’s not big. They were just sitting on a couch. She sits and her whole arm is now touching Gura’s. Oh god. Would it be weird to move away? Amelia leans back against the couch and sags there. She’s lazy. She’s harmless. 

Gura leans back with her. It’s oddly relaxing. Too tired to care about skin contact, too sleepy to wonder what it means. The opening credits of the movie start to roll. Amelia has no hopes of paying attention to it in the slightest, at least for a while. Gura is calm. She channels that. It helps. 

Gura laughs occasionally, a little rumble in her chest that only barely escapes her lips. Amelia keeps an eye on the TV, but she’s exhausted. She’s socially taxed. She doesn’t want to speak. She’s glad for the movie. She’s glad for Gura, who doesn’t care when she can’t find a comfortable spot and keeps accidentally nudging her. 

Amelia loses her grip on the couch cushions and ends up with her chin bumping Gura’s shoulder. 

“Sorry.” She whispers. 

“It’s okay,” Gura says. She’s looking at her in the corner of her eye. Amelia wonders how invested in the movie she really is. “Need an extra pillow?”

“I’m good.”

They settle comfortably. Amelia’s eyes are heavy enough that she feels herself nod off. She thought she’d managed to wedge herself just enough against the couch that she would sleep upright. She blinks the fog in her head away to the end credits of the movie playing. 

Her head is in Gura’s lap. 

She inhales in surprise. She wants to sit up and apologize, wait no, she needs to play it off. She feels every part of her go tense, worried, scared, I’m getting too close when I’m not close enough and this isn’t how I want this to go. 

“Sorry.” Gura murmurs, like any of this was her fault. Amelia is keenly aware of her fingers tangled with her hair. The gentle scratch along her head is the only thing keeping her rooted in her spot. “I didn’t want to wake you up.”

“Uh.” Amelia fists her hand into the blankets to stop herself from freaking out. She has the maniacal urge to punch herself. “I didn’t mean to.”

“It’s okay. You looked cute.”

Amelia burns. Her heart is a traitor that keeps her there for a moment longer. She tries to be casual about rising. She gives a stretch. Gura is watching her with amused blues. 

“Heading to bed chief?”

“Yeah,” Amelia says. Her voice sounds too high and she fixes that with a quieter, “Yeah. All set here?”

“Mhm. Goodnight.” 

“Goodnight,” Amelia says. A strange feeling of disappointment follows her as she goes to her room. She shoves away any thoughts that want to go back to that couch away. She goes to sleep in her bed and wonders why it feels so much colder than it did before. 

The next morning, breakfast is her warm awakening. It’s a cozy smell that gets her out of bed. She pads down her hall after the scent of cooking bacon and hashbrowns. She finds Gura, pajamas rumpled, and her hair askew. She’s yawning as she shoves eggs onto a plate. 

“Good morning.” Gura mumbles. “Want some breakfast?”

Amelia blinks at her. She feels like she’s dreaming, so she says, “Yeah.” 

Gura doesn’t seem bothered. Amelia might be overthinking it. She eats breakfast with Gura. She glances up at the shark throughout the meal. Gura talks with her eyes on her plate, her words minced with food, and her fingers twirling her fork in hand. She talks and she doesn’t look bothered. 

Amelia relaxes. 

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Amelia stops worrying. 

She felt like she should walk on eggshells at first, but Gura had smoothly slid into her life without any further argument. Next, she thought that the idea of love, of being loved, of anything to do with gooey heartfelt emotions- yuck. No thanks. And finally, was she okay on this treadmill her future self had set her on where Gura was head over heels for her?

Yeah, it fucking rocks.

Maybe it was a combination of a lot of things. Gura is healing a wound in her heart and she’s doing that with every day she spends with Amelia. She shines. She glows. Amelia can’t recall her ever smiling that widely. Amelia herself feels like she’s walking on feathers. Her life picks up a tune and it’s the sound that Gura hums when she makes breakfast. It’s the hoodie she leaves on the back of Amelia’s couch. It’s the spare futon that just always stays made because at this point Gura sleeps at her place every other day. 

Amelia is a time traveler. Time could be adhered to, yeah sure, but that was boring. She never liked doing it like that. If her future self meets Gura in the past, that’s because she damn well wanted to. Amelia? She feels the lines blurring between her and this ‘future self’. What was future to Gura may not be so distant after all. 

Except Gura is in love and at the end of the road is Amelia loving her back.

She doesn’t think she’s there yet. She adjusts from a sweaty mess and she can take flirts better than melting into a puddle on the floor. She fires back sometimes. She gets a spectacular view of Gura turning eight different shades of red. Her voice gets squeaky when she’s flustered. It’s adorable. 

Amelia likes her. She likes her a lot.

The future can be scary, but that’s the adventure of it. I want to experience that. I was to feel what she felt, this girl you fell in love with. I want to fall like she did, I want to know how. Will you sweep me off my feet? 

Gura obliges. 

She’s chivalrous with a devious personality. She moves Amelia’s chair out for her when dinner is ready. She steals food off her plate. She’ll open doors for her but she’ll flicker the light in Amelia’s office to get her attention, which Amelia finds four times as annoying as someone knocking. She’s fun. 

Sometimes. 

Sometimes Amelia stares at her lips. 

Her heart skips and tumbles and she has to look away before she’s caught. The steps they make are a road that binds her. Tiny accomplishments that feel like nothing. It’s too smooth, too harmless, it’s comfortable. One morning they wake up late. They’d made plans to go to the zoo, but the zoo hours were cut today because of the approaching weather. Gura had panicked. 

“I wanna see those penguins, Watson!” She’s hoping on one foot as she puts on her shoes. “C’mon, chop chop! I don’t wanna spend all my time waiting to get tickets in line. Calli said this zoo is really busy too. Did I mention I wanna see the penguins?” 

“Alright, alright.” Amelia laughs. She’s grabbing her coat, but that’s not fast enough for Gura. The very moment her coat is on Gura is grabbing her hand and nearly drags her out of the apartment. 

She was holding Gura’s hand. It doesn’t last long, maybe only half a block before Gura’s speed catches up with her and she nearly stumbles into a wall. Amelia puts her hands in her pockets. She laughs at the pout Gura throws her way. They banter about karma. It’s not long before they’re holding hands again. It was seamless. They walked side by side, their hands would brush, and Gura would slide her fingers together with hers. Sometimes, Amelia did it too. She likes the thrill of being brave.  

It makes her chest warm. She floats through her day. A happiness has her in a headlock and she has no intention of escaping it. Gura brushes her thumb over her knuckles sometimes. 

Amelia likes her. 

But the sensation of fingers over her skin, careful digits, a thoughtless caress, mine. Amelia feels like she might evaporate on the spot. It’d be a good evaporation. Everything Gura does to her, her smiles, her touch, her laugh- it makes Amelia want to turn into a very fine mist. Happy mist. 

Gura hums from beside her. She’s watching the penguins behind the glass. Her tail is wagging, slow back and forths that show how content she is to stand there and watch penguins for hours. Fondness swells in Amelia’s chest. She leans over to rest her cheek on Gura’s shoulder. She feels Gura brush her thumb over her knuckles again. It was such a quick reaction Amelia can almost imagine it as a thank you. The affection leaves her cheeks warm. 

“Wanna stay and watch them feed the birds?” Gura asks, her voice quiet under the world and meant only for her. 

Amelia hides a smile into Gura’s shirt. She doubts she hid it very well. They’re nearly cheek-to-cheek. Gura’s lips are so close she thinks she might die. It’s wonderful. 

“Yeah. I’d love to.” 

Gura preens, “Good. See? Great date idea.” 

Amelia doesn’t correct her when she says date. When Gura’s tail wags again, it’s brushing at her ankles. Amelia doesn’t she’d ever correct her on that. A date? That’s so small to what they have. It’s a tiny speck of a supernova.

I’m falling in love. 

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Amelia isn’t a stranger to her friends poking her about working late or spending too much time at the office. Long jobs and dark nights leave her well up into the late hours. She rubs her eyes and the sun is rising. The documents in front of her feel no closer to completion than when she had started them hours ago. 

She knows she’s in for it when a sleepy-eyed Gura pokes her head in. She squints in Amelia’s direction, “Were you pullin’ an all-nighter, chief?”

“Yeah.” Amelia yawns. Her back felt like hell. Her eyelids were so heavy she felt like she was one blink away from using her desk as a pillow. She rubs her eyes. They felt raw and achy. “I had lots of work to catch up on.” 

“Wanna take a break?” There’s a bead of worry in Gura’s voice. “You look like you need it.” 

She really couldn’t. She was already behind because of all the hanging out she’d been doing with Gura. One night to sacrifice her sleep would be worth it in the end, she knew that. She’d have her whole week to spend with Gura. Her bed was calling her and it was the only thing that kept her lips sealed tightly. 

Gura walks across the room and around her desk. Amelia keeps an eye on her, but her pen scribbles into the margin of her document. She just has a few more notes to put together, she needed to look for that file somewhere, she- 

Gura’s hands slide over her shoulders. Amelia tenses. It felt like a brick wall. Gura hisses as her fingers grip her shoulders, “Jeez, Watson, ever heard of stretching?”

“I will always have bad posture,” Amelia grumbles. 

Gura flexes her fingers. Amelia grimaces. It felt more painful than it was pleasurable to have fingers kneading at the tight muscle of her shoulders. Gura works out the tension, flexing her palm up and around her shoulder. The aches smooth out. Amelia is slumping terribly against her desk. 

When Gura’s hands trail lower, Amelia sighs. The shark touches up and down her back. She gives attention to Amelia’s spine. It’s where her muscles tie themself up the worst. It’s where things loosen into bliss. Amelia hums. It takes her a moment to register that her cheek is against her desk. 

Gura laughs sleepily, “So, about that break?”

Amelia makes a pitiful noise. She wants that, but work was demanding her. Gura’s hands are relentless and go down for another pass of her back. She feels like putty. 

“Yeah.” Amelia slurs. “Bedtime.” 

Gura giggles. Amelia doesn’t have even a mote of energy to get up let alone raise her head. In fact, with her back feeling healed, she felt like this would be ideal for a nap. Gura didn’t seem to agree. The shark was bending down to nudge her hand underneath Amelia’s knees. 

“C’mon, champ, up and ‘attem.”

Amelia obligingly wraps her arms around Gura’s neck. She feels like she should be freaking out. Her cheek is pressed up against Gura’s shoulder. Gura is carrying her. Instead, she felt like she was floating along in a very comfortable dream. To be looked after and cared for. Amelia swoons. 

When Gura lays her down on her covers, she doesn’t let go of Gura. The blue of her eyes is sharp but cautious. 

“I was gonna go make breakfast.” Gura murmurs. 

“Mmh.” Amelia buries her nose into Gura’s shirt. It smelled like her detergent. The idea that Gura had been doing her laundry at Amelia’s house was making her giddy. “Stay?”

Gura’s resolve crumbles. With a gentleness that could rival a butterfly, Gura leans down with her. She crawls after her, careful not to nudge her or elbow her. She lifts the covers up until they’re both free of them before drawing them up over them both. 

Amelia melts. It felt nice. She’s sinking into her mattress. She feels Gura’s hand touch her bangs. Tiny caresses that leave love letters of affection. Her thumb was against her cheek. Her fingers were against Amelia’s lips. 

Amelia sighs. She hears Gura exhale shakily. 

“Ame?” Gura's voice is a raindrop, tiny and quiet, “I love you.” 

Amelia mumbles. She knows that, she’s more than aware of that, but having it said like that is making her warm and happy. For the first time, she’s thinking about how much she likes that. She feels her tongue curl in her mouth. She wants to speak. She wants to say it. She runs it over in her head, with her heart, with everything she feels and believes. 

She says, “I love you too.” 

Gura laughs, a breathless sort of thing, “Yeah?”

“Yeah.” Amelia murmurs, sleep chipping at her resolve, “I mean it.” 

“That’s-” Gura sniffles. She gives a wet laugh, “I love you. I love you.” 

“I love you too,” Amelia repeats. She thinks it gets messed up when she can barely say a word and it ends up sounding like a zombie. Gura doesn’t mind. She can feel bravery in the shy kiss pressed against her forehead. She can feel exhilaration and happiness in each one peppered over her face. Below her eyes, on her nose, on her cheek, on her jaw. 

“Sleep well, sunshine,” Gura whispers. Her hands are roping around Amelia under the covers. They’re closer. Amelia buries her nose into the crook of Gura’s neck. Comfort and warmth, heartbeat and laughter. Amelia drifts off like that. Gura sings for her and it chases into her dreams, of long beaches and pink waves. 

Amelia can’t help but look forward to that, every night, as long as she could keep her. As long as time affords them. As long as they’re happy.

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Her first kiss is accidental. 

It’s a happy accident. It’s a surprising one, one she isn’t expecting and she surely doubts Gura was thinking either. It was another morning. Amelia wakes up to breakfast coaxing her from her bed. The couch is a mound of blankets. A pillow is falling onto the floor. With a yawn, she’s reaching down to fix it. It feels flat, she thinks. She makes a mental note to swap it with one of her pillows. It must be hell on Gura’s back to keep sleeping on the couch. 

Gura is making pastries. Her hands are powder white and there’s a smudge of it underneath her eye. Amelia greets her by placing her chin on her shoulder. 

“Good morning.” She slurs. 

“Good morning,” Gura says. She doesn’t sound more awake than Amelia in the slightest. “I’m making danishes. Little ones.”

Amelia peers down at her work. Half were filled with blueberry, she notes. The other half Gura was in the process of making. Strawberry filling.

“They look cute.” 

Gura preens, “Thank you. You didn’t have any frosting so they looked kinda plain. Not yummy.”

“What? I’m sure they’re yummy.” 

“No.” Gura whines. “I wanted frosting.” 

“We can get frosting.” Amelia doesn’t know why saying we makes her tummy warm. Love is fresh for her. Her heart does happy leaps over the smallest things. She noses at Gura’s shirt, “We can go buy some.”

“I’m making them now, ” Gura complains. “If we’re going out shopping it’d be for dinner.”

“That’s fine. We can have danishes for dinner.”

“You’re insane.” 

“But yours are yummy!”

Gura sighs like this whole conversation was a burden, “I don’t wanna make them again though.”

“I’ll make them with you.” 

“Daw, sweet talker,” Gura says. She tilts her head. She hasn’t taken her eyes off her work, but she’s going for a cute cheek kiss. Amelia knows this. Gura tilting her head has her doing the same, almost instinctively, she wasn’t even thinking. 

Their lips brush. 

Gura jumps. She belts out loudly, “Hungry? Are you hungry?” 

Amelia hides her smile behind Gura’s shoulder, “Starving.” 

Gura makes a noise. It’s absurd enough Amelia laughs. 

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Her heart beats a wildly excited tune. Gura gives a soft kiss. They’re little treasures to her that she cherishes. When she kisses Amelia, she savors it. Amelia feels like she’s upside down. She’s being savored. It’s a flattering feeling. 

She learns Gura likes kisses, but she melts under head scratches. Amelia will cup her hands around Gura’s ears. Gura practically purrs, her tail swaying back and forth with every pass of Amelia’s fingers.  She explores Gura’s tail because that’s new and weird. Gura doesn’t ever look embarrassed by touches to her tail. It’s only when Amelia holds her prosthetic does her face turn tomato red. 

“Did you have to commission this?” Amelia asks. “How does it work?”

Gura laughs, “ You give it to me, dingus.”

“I do? In the past?”

“Yeah.”

Amelia blinks. It occurs to her she’d never asked about the injury. She hadn’t thought to nor wanted to when she was on shaky ground with Gura. Now, with Gura practically curled into her lap like a content cat, Amelia felt braver about asking sensitive questions.

“How’d you lose your fin?”

Gura hums, “I got stuck under a boulder.”

“Really?” Amelia asks. Gura gives her a flat look and she hastily tacks on, “Sorry, it sounded crazy.”

“I felt crazy.” 

“Was it bad?”

Gura sighs, nestling until her head is resting against Amelia’s tummy. She mumbles, “It was really bad. My head was bad, I felt bad, I was being bad.”

“That’s a lot of bad.” Amelia runs her hand through snowy hair. Gura exhales. “What can I do to make it better?”

“You already did it.” Gura murmurs. “You’re doing it right now.”

I haven’t done it yet, Amelia thinks. She makes a note in her head to ask Gura about that later. She needed a timeframe. She needed a location. If she helps Gura, that’s what she wants to do. She’d do a lot for Gura. 

“You just… didn’t stop,” Gura whispers. “You kept with me, even if I didn’t want you to. I think that saved me.”

Amelia’s heart tumbles, “I didn’t do anything.”

“Maybe not yet, ” Gura says knowingly, “You did a lot for me. You fed me when I wasn’t eating, you took care of me, you-” She laughs quietly, a weak thing, “You gave me hope for a future.”

Amelia feels like that’s way too much. She’s undeserving of praise when she hasn’t even accomplished anything. It cemented it firmly in her head. She needed to time travel. She wanted to know, to experience it, would Gura fall in love with a girl like me?

She wants to know.

“Hey,” Amelia says. “How would you feel about me flirting with another girl?”

Gura chokes. She looks up at Amelia like she just broke a lamp over her head, “What? Are you trying to make me jealous?”

“I thought about going back to the past. To you.”

Gura blinks at her. She starts to smile, a bright thing, soft and warm, “You really had to ask it like that?”

Amelia cracks a wry smile, “Well?”

Gura reaches up to loop her arms around her neck. She drags her down. Amelia follows the tug. She knows what Gura wants. She tilts her head obligingly. Gura kisses her like a butterfly like she’s more fragile than an insect. 

“You’re a tyrant to me,” Gura whispers against her lips. 

“Do you want me to be nice?”

“Be yourself,” Gura says. “That’s what I fell in love with.”

Amelia’s heart jumps up into her throat. She doesn’t want to be emotional about that. She takes another kiss, a distraction, and Gura is happy to give it to her. 

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Amelia doesn’t know what to take with her. 

Obviously, Gura gets hurt. She needed a first aid kit for that. Did she need that now though? She thinks it over as she piles her belongings on her bed. Gura had told her the timeframe. It didn’t sound dangerous. No harm would befall Gura yet but Amelia would like to try and avoid it if necessary. If she could prevent the injury altogether, that’s even better. The location was too bizarre to be real. 

A rock. 

The fuck?

“You’re not lying, right?” Amelia hollers. “Like, if I travel back I won’t go face-first into a bunch of sand.”

“I’m not lying!” Gura shouts from the other room. She’d been largely excluded from Amelia’s plans. She didn’t seem invested other than giving Amelia pointers and looking fond about it. For the time being, Gura was more focused on moving her things into Amelia’s guest room. Everyone, even Bubba, was excited about her upgrade from the couch. 

While she was dealing with that, Amelia’s attention was elsewhere. 

“Do you remember any gifts I got you?” 

“Nope.” Gura was being a jerk as she dragged a bag across the floor. She disappears into the room across the hallway. Bubba comically follows her, his tail wagging as he paws at the bag. “No dice, chief. You can figure that out.” 

“You just don’t remember.” Amelia accuses. 

“Don’t be a sore loser.”

Amelia grumbles under her breath. Being over-prepared felt like it’d bite her in the ass. What was she supposed to do? This felt like she was preparing for a date. Feeling self-conscious, she scampers to the bathroom. The mirror shows a button-up blouse and a plaid skirt. She fixes her bangs. She tries on a headband and makes a face. 

Gura appears in the doorway. She’s crossing her arms and leaning against the doorway. She looks amused.

“Gonna get prettied up for me?”

“No.” Amelia pouts. “You’re having too much fun. I’m gonna kiss her and you’ll be so jealous.” 

“So jealous,” Gura repeats. She teasingly puts her hand against her lips. “Even if I remember it?”

Amelia feels her face burn, “You so did not.” 

“I do. You left,” Gura breathes, “an impression.” 

Amelia ends up leaving with just her watch. There are gifts and ideas in her brain, but she feels like that’s being too much when she doesn’t feel like much at all. She’s expecting to land on a bomb or something. She plants her feet onto a rock. 

It’s literally just a rock. 

“What?” Amelia looks around in bewilderment. It was an empty horizon as far as she could see. There’s a speckling of clouds, but the sun is burning brightly. Amelia makes a note to get sunscreen next time. Waves crash against her rock, lapping up onto her legs. She gets seaspray on her eyelashes and in her hair. 

Amelia can’t help but laugh, “You are so gonna get it when I get home.”

She sits down.

And she waits.

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It takes a few attempts. Just sitting on a rock isn’t going to draw much attention. She gets noticed after a few days. There’s a brief worry beneath the surface of the ocean as something swims away. Amelia stares at that spot intensely. Nothing else happens the rest of the day, but she can’t stop thinking about it. 

When she finally meets Gura, Amelia feels like she’s going to fall down a flight of stairs for her. 

She’d seen shark people circling her rock underneath the surface. They were skittish. They fled if she kicked her feet into the water. One doesn’t run away. Only one is brave enough to peek above the surface. 

Gura’s hair is parted into pigtails. She has a clamshell hairclip. There are golden leaves braided into her hair. She has blue scales below her eyes. Amelia feels like she might fall off the rock. As it stands, she can’t stop smiling. Gura meekly poking her head up out of the water is the cutest thing. 

Gura makes a squeaky noise. 

Amelia mimics it, amused. “Nice to meet you.” 

Gura stutters, no grace about it as she belts out, “Uh, um, hi.” 

“Hi,” Amelia repeats. She feels giddy. Gura was so shy. It was endearing. It was taking a lot not to fire off a flirt at her and kill her on the spot. 

It’s her first time talking to a human. It shows, in the way she flusters over her words and fidgets with her whole body. Amelia’s cheeks hurt from smiling. The other sharks get brave enough to join Gura, crowding around her rock with thinly veiled fear. They ask her questions. It’s a bunch of random, aimless questions. More importantly, they’re talking over each other while Gura fades into the background. She doesn’t want that. She came here for Gura. 

She gets a devious idea. 

“I’ll tell ya what.” She says haughtily, like she’s offering the deal of all deals, a really great bargain. “Every day you guys get to send one of you up here, how about that? And you only get to ask me five questions.” 

She has them hooked. She can see Gura perk up and that’s all that matters to her. One shark, five questions. She was hoping the others would get bored. She hopes Gura won’t get bored. She likes when Gura looks as she does now, her eyes bright with ferocity. 

“We’ll have you figured out in no time,” Gura vows. 

It’s going to take a lot not to kiss her, Amelia laments. Pride swells in her chest, happiness, and fondness. 

“I’m counting on it.” She says. 

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She likes playing this game. 

She can tell Gura likes it too, even if they speak in half-truths. Teases drop from her tongue. This Gura, she’s shy and she moves with the current like she’ll let it take her if it wanted to. Amelia places her chin in her palm. She can’t stop smiling. 

Gura asks, “Can you sing for me?”

Amelia snorts, “Good one.” 

Gura ducks her head. Amelia was so used to joking around that she feels like she’d just been clubbed over the head. Was that flirting? 

“Wait,” Amelia feels the urge to laugh, “That was real?”

“No,” Gura says. Her face is cherry red. Amelia wants to coo at her. She tries to get her to come up on the rock, but that doesn’t fly very far. She goes back home with a happy skip in her step. 

Gura is doing laundry. She can hear the dryer closing. She pads down the hallway, seawater dripping from her hair and cheer thundering loudly in her chest. Amelia abandons all stealth to swoop in and wrap her arms around Gura’s waist. Gura gives a startled squeal. Amelia doesn’t stop there and hoists the shark up, twirling the both of them around in a dangerous circle. 

“Watson! What the hell!” Gura yelps. She elbows Amelia in the side. “I’m trying to clean here!”

“I love you.” Amelia sings. “I love you so much, I love you this much.” She gives her a messy kiss on the ear. Gura shrieks, a bright laugh following closely behind as she wriggles out of Amelia’s arms. 

“Did you crack?” Gura asks. She’s smiling as she bends down to pick up the laundry basket. “Seriously, what gives?”

“Do you wanna have a karaoke night?”

“What for? I’m not saying no.” Gura says. “I’d love to.”

“I need practice.

“For-” Gura stops. She snorts and looks away. Amelia pinches her arm. “Hey, stop it.”

“You’re making fun of me.”

“No, I’m not.”

“You’re laughing at me.” She makes a strangling motion at Gura. Gura lets one hand off the basket to grab her hands and pull them up to her lips. Amelia simmers, placated by affections over her knuckles. 

“Can we order pizza for it?” Gura asks. She’s looking at Amelia through her eyelashes. Her smile is knowing, “Ya know, for karaoke night snacks.”

“Sure.” 

They rock out to punk songs. The early 2000s blare loudly in her living room. Gura air guitars and accidentally kicks over the pizza box at some point. It turns into the biggest battle of the night, Bubba versus two girls who can’t stop laughing about the whole ordeal. The dog gets away with a slice. Amelia gets away with a few songs. 

When Past Gura sings for her, she sings in Greek. Amelia’s heart swells because she’s heard Gura sing before. There’s beauty in that. She sings like she’s cried before like this song was a teardrop that she’s tucked into her pocket for safekeeping. Her Gura sings the same way. They’re the same in every way. Amelia falls in love with the same girl all over again, her heart swooning over every note that rolls off Gura’s lips. 

Gura wants to hear her sing. She lowers her head and bats her eyelashes and says, “Please?”

Oh god. Amelia laughs self-consciously. It’s awkward on her tongue. There’s no music to carry her along, there’s nothing but the crash of waves and Gura’s undivided attention. No amount of karaoke nights could prepare her for that. She sings. Gura listens. 

When she goes home, she stands in her living room and breathes. 

It’s late and she can hear the shower running. Gura is singing, her voice carrying melodies. Amelia can hear stomps and squeaks of the tub. She was dancing her heart out in there. She was the same girl, the same everything. The lines between the Past and the Present were blurred. 

Amelia leans against the wall. When Gura emerges from the bathroom, she’s toweling off her hair. She’s making happy noises and blowing raspberries into the cloth. When she takes it off, she blinks at Amelia. 

“Oh hey.” She cracks a grin. “How’d the wooing go?”

“Oh, fantastic, I have you eating out of my palm.” Amelia would not mention how badly she had fallen, not twice over. Gura would lord that over her forever if she found out Amelia had fallen in love with her a second time. 

“What am I eating?” 

“My wonderful personality.” 

“Sick and twisted,” Gura says. “You know what you should do? You should bring a baseball bat and not explain it at all. Don’t even acknowledge it.”

Amelia belts out a laugh, “You know I’m messing with you, right? You got pissed about this stuff.” 

“Before, yeah.” Gura rests her chin against Amelia’s collar. She noses at her chin as she says, “If driving me crazy is what gets me all of this, then you can make her go insane. It’s so worth it.” 

“Thanks for the buttering up,” Amelia says. She won’t deny how it made her tummy flip-flop. “But I’m having fun with the questions. I feel like anything else is just bullying.” 

“Mmh.” Gura kisses her jaw. No matter how many kisses she gets, Amelia still squirms when they’re like this. Gura liked to give intense kisses. To be savored. It’s an overwhelming feeling. She doesn’t thinks she’d mind at all how intense Gura could be. 

“I can’t say I’m not a little jealous,” Gura admits quietly. Her teeth are brushing Amelia’s neck. Amelia feels all the hairs on her arms standing up. “I mean, who's to say you’re doing something different with this girl than what I remember?”

“That’s not how time travel works,” Amelia says amusedly. Her voice kinda swims from the kiss Gura gifts her. 

Gura hums and says, “Can I have my Ame time now?” 

Amelia snorts, “You can have me all the time.” 

“Yeah.” Gura’s tail wags. Her eyes are gleaming with mischief and triumph, “All mine.” 

Amelia doesn’t go back to the rock that night. She drowns in kisses and floats in a song Gura crafts with her teeth. 

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Chapter Text

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Amelia feels bad about missing a day. She immediately fixes this by going back so she didn’t miss that day. Time travel. It was the chef's kiss of problem fixers. Amelia waits on the rock, happy with herself and feeling self-conscious about the scarf she was wearing.

When Gura appears, she looks bewildered by its appearance. 

“Are you cold?” Gura asks. She folds her arms onto the rock, her brow furrowing with worry. “Were you waiting long this time?”

“No, no.” Amelia flutters her hand. There were far less innocuous reseasons she was wearing a scarf. She felt it in the throbbing along her neck. She clears her throat. Changing the subject won’t do anything for her burning cheeks, “Uh, fashion statement.”

“What?” Gura relaxes into a grin. The water brushes up over her elbows and kisses her cheeks. She’s smiling differently than the Gura that was smiling at her last night. Amelia fans her face.

“It’s nothing.”

“Really?” 

“Yes, really.” Amelia huffs. She can’t help but smile. “What were you up to? Snuffing curfew?”

Gura’s tail worries beneath the waves, a happy back and forth. She’s hiding her own smile in her arms. “You kissed me.”

Oh yeah. She's kissed her a lot actually. Amelia feels dazed at the idea of it. Future Gura had given her heaps of kisses. This Gura had taken one from Amelia. It was a sweet, star-filled one. Amelia kicks her feet in the water. Gura moves to her legs, shy, but she’s placing her hands on Amelia’s knees. 

Amelia feels like she’s going to expire. 

Gura rises up onto the rock. Her hands shake, her face flaming red. Amelia laughs. It’s such a stark contrast to the confidence her Gura oozed. This cautiously affectionate Gura was endearing. When she sits in Amelia’s lap, she buries her face in Amelia’s shoulder. She’s practically vibrating from embarrassment. 

Amelia wraps her arms around her. She murmurs, “Well, take a seat.” 

“I wanted that to be cool,” Gura says mournfully. 

Amelia’s heart swells. She’d traveled back here wary of any injuries Gura might receive. With none in sight, she relaxes, happy to snuggle on this rock in the middle of nowhere. Gura seems too afraid to do anything sexy aside from cuddling. Amelia rubs her back. Gura curls against her, a rumble in her throat. 

“I wanted to ask for a second kiss.” 

“Well?” 

Gura shudders. She’s leaning back to look Amelia in the eye. Almost as soon as she does, her eyes skitter away. Shy. Amelia coaxes her out, one soft kiss on her cheek. Gura leans away like Amelia was burning her. Amelia smiles. 

Gura’s whole face is a tomato. She’s making a garbled noise in her throat, “Stop looking at me like that.” 

“Like what?”

“The same way you look at stars,” Gura says. “It’s embarrassing.” 

That’s cute. Amelia draws her next kiss on Gura’s jaw, gentle, come here butterfly. Gura squirms. There’s a high-pitched whine caught between her lips that would have made Bubba yip. Amelia grins and chases a kiss to Gura’s chin. She maps another one to the corner of her mouth. Her heart pounds. 

Gura looks breathless. She’s flushed down to her neck as she asks, “Do you love me?” 

“Yeah.” Amelia grins dopily. “What gave it away?”

Gura ducks her head. Amelia captures her jaw with her hand, brings her back, come here, come to me. Amelia kisses her like she’s breakable. Gura melts in her arms, too much energy and nerves. Her nails are digging into Amelia’s thighs. Ocean waves douse over them. Amelia thinks it’s applause in her ears and every water droplet on her cheek is a rose petal. 

Gura leans back and nearly falls into the ocean. She looks like she’s barely lucid as she says, “Woah.”

“Better a second time?”

Gura laughs, “Can I have thirds?” 

“Don’t be greedy.” Amelia scolds. She’s poking Gura in the nose. This time, Gura dramatically falls off her lap. There’s a splash as Gura retreats into the water. Amelia knows better. The poor girl looked like she was about to burst into flames. When the shark peeks her head above the surface, her cheeks are flushed and her eyes are moon bright. 

“I think I love you too,” Gura says. “Ame.”

It takes a lot not to dive in after her and show her a thousand more kisses. Amelia smiles, cotton warm and fuzzy. 

“We kiss like that every day in the future,” Amelia says. 

Gura looks winded, “The future?”

“Of course.” Amelia sheepishly laughs. “You’re the one who swept me off my feet.”

Gura preens. She looks excited about the idea. She has questions and she buzzes with them, her chin bumping against Amelia’s knee. It’s a companionable moment. Amelia wants to keep doing this every day. It’s fun. Her heart sings with it. 

“You’re a time traveler?”

“The very best.”

“Can you tell me where I meet you?”

“Well, sure. It’s a great story actually.” Amelia grins deviously down at the shark, “But then you’d know. That’d be spoilers. ”

“Oh c’mon.” Gura whines. “Please?”

Amelia spends an hour on that rock recounting dates, flimsy first meetings, and stolen moments centuries from now. She has Gura hooked. Her shark listens with wonder. Amelia feels a little somber about her having to wait so long. But I’m here to help you with an injury. I guess that never happened. Maybe I got the time wrong. I’ll check with my Gura. 

“Same time tomorrow?” Gura practically chirps. 

Amelia smiles, “Always.” She figures she’s going to claim this rock on her taxes one day. The thought amuses her. She’s starting to like it here. She kind of wants to go to other places though. Gura’s distress over Amelia not being able to visit Atlantis has her thinking over the idea. She’ll put it on the shelf for now. 

She watches her shark go, an eerie red sea all that’s left in her wake. 

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Chapter Text

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When Amelia visits the rock again, the sea is red. 

Amelia sits down and looks at it with fascination. She’s never seen the ocean so red before. She’s read about it. Jellyfish can do this, and sea snakes, and all types of marine species can change the color of the water. It’s certainly a vast amount. She kicks her feet in the water. 

There’s red stuff on her shoe. 

Bored, Amelia pries it off and holds it in her palm. Its seaweed is her first guess. She brushes her thumb over it. It looked less like grass and more like a flaky bit of cloth that had rotted in the sun for many years. The visceral red color of it was interesting at least. 

She waits. 

Did I overwhelm her? Amelia wonders. She feels a little guilty about that. She’d so far let Gura approach her at her own pace. She didn’t want to rush her. It was cute when Gura took those initiatives for herself, even while her face was cherry red and her words fumbled on her tongue. Amelia liked that best. Did she do something that spooked Gura off?

… was she a bad kisser?

Amelia purses her lips. Surely a bad kiss wouldn’t scare her off. They’d confessed! It’d been so sweet too. Amelia swoons over it, shoving moody thoughts out of her head. The moon hangs high in the sky. She likes that. Moonlit dates bring out a sparkling ferocity in Gura’s eyes. She hopes to see it again. 

She waits. 

The hours pass on. She feels tired. She rubs her eyes, her optimism slumping the longer she stays on the rock. Where is Gura? She doesn’t know. She can’t go down to Atlantis to check either. She could only wait and hope that Gura wasn’t bored of her. Amelia recalls her first meeting with Gura- her Gura- and how standoffish and frustrating she’d been. She worries her lip between her teeth. Had that wedge between them already happened? What had she missed?

She’d kinda hoped to avoid it. It’d be nice if they were on balanced feet. 

The sun glows eerily warm above the horizon. It’s barely peeking up, but the hot glare of it has Amelia wiping tears from her eyes. She grumbles under her breath. Her best bet? Gura slept in. Maybe she was sick? 

Oh. Amelia perks up. I could help with that. 

She grabs her watch and sets her time for back home. When she lands in her living room, a colossal yawn catches her and leaves her jaw aching. It’s nighttime again. The quiet of the apartment draws her down the hall to her bedroom. 

Gura is laying in her bed. She has her phone in her lap, her tongue poking out as she fiddles with it. She glances up when Amelia appears in the doorway, “Wow, that only took four minutes this time.”

“I’m the best time traveler, aren’t I?” Amelia preens. She doesn’t come off as smug as she’d hoped for, not with worry under her skin. Gura must have noticed. She pats the spot beside her. Amelia has the courtesy to shuck off her coat and shoes before crawling in to join her. 

Gura drags one arm around her to tuck her against her side. Amelia obliges, happy to soak in that affection. 

“How’d it go?”

“You weren’t there.”

Gura pauses, “What?”

“Yeah.” Amelia yawns. “Did you ever get sick or something?”

She feels the hand around her shoulders go rigid. Amelia glances at Gura. Her shark was looking at her like she’d said something odd. 

“Sick.” Gura echoes. “That was so long ago.”

“You were sick?”

“I think so. I don’t remember it that well.” Gura’s brow furrows. “I was sick, I think. I know you treated me.” 

Amelia perks up, “So that’s when you got injured?”

“Yeah.” Gura frowns at her phone. She looks uncomfortable. Amelia nudges her companionably.

“What’s wrong?”

“I dunno.” Gura shifts anxiously. “I feel like I’m forgetting something. Everything that happened back then was so fuzzy for me. I only really focused on you.” 

Amelia’s heart swells at that. She felt more motivated than ever to help Gura. She leans her head against Gura’s shoulder. Absentmindedly, Gura draws her in closer, her hand rubbing up and down her back. She’s thoughtfully quiet.

“Did anything seem strange?” Gura asks softly. 

“Hm.” Amelia closes her eyes. “Well, you weren’t there.”

“Yeah, gathered that much.”

“So you must be down in Atlantis sick.” 

“Sure.” 

“The ocean was red,” Amelia adds. “That’s pretty random though.” 

Gura is silent. Amelia glances up. Gura isn’t looking at her. She’s staring at her phone but she’s looking past it. Something is haunting her. Frowning, Amelia places her hand over Gura’s phone. It shakes Gura out of it, her shark blinking in surprise. 

“Gura?”

“A red sea.” Gura echoes. She looks hunted. “I think that’s how I got hurt. The sea was red when I was pinned under that boulder.” 

Amelia thinks that over. She stows that information away. She needed to redo her lonely night but she needed to be a little more thorough. Gura was trapped somewhere. She couldn’t very well swim down and free her. She had to be creative. 

“I’ll figure it out.” She doesn’t like the troubled expression Gura wears. She looks like she’s trying to remember something and is a hair away from panicking about it. “Don’t worry, stinky. You’re in my capable hands.” 

“Ha ha.” Gura laughs dryly. Her expression is softening despite the banter. She leans over to kiss the side of Amelia’s head. “Thanks.”

“Of course. I want to help.” Amelia glances down at the prosthetic on Gura’s tail. “Speaking of which, do you mind if I nab that for a few hours and copy the design?”

Gura snorts, “Will you give it back?”

“I’m not a thief!” 

“You won’t try and give me a cheap copy right?”

“Who do you take me for?!”

Lonely rocks are forgotten. Amelia lets worries slide off her mind as she cuddles close to her shark and teases her about her mobile game addiction. 

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Chapter Text

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Amelia tries again. She can’t very well go down to Atlantis to check on Gura. She fast forwards time a bit until dawn burns bright in the sky. The sea is a hazy pink. Amelia paces on the rock. She’d come a bit more prepared this time. She wasn’t looking forward to diving into the ocean, but if she wanted to explore a bit, she’d have to get wet. 

She thinks wearing her swimsuit for this is a little absurd. 

Gura had thought so too, a grin curling on her lips as she looks over her bikini. Amelia had made a face at her.

“Stop undressing me with your eyes.”

“What’s left to undress?” Gura asked incredulously. She’d gotten pinched for that. 

Nonetheless, Amelia had her emergency pack with her. She fastens the straps around her chest. The weight of it against her back motivates her. Gura was out there hurt and she was bound and determined to help. 

It takes her a mere twenty minutes to find her. 

Amelia isn’t a stranger to injuries. She’d learned, she’d gotten her degree, and she’d had a lot of injuries of her own to practice with. Thankfully, never serious. She knew this would be dire, but not something she couldn’t fix. The very idea of anything being impossible to her was scoffed at. 

Gura is floating face down in the ocean. There’s a cloud of pink around her. Amelia swims closer. It’s not so worrying to see her like that. The utterly limp way in which she floats is what alarms Amelia. She swims close enough to touch Gura’s shoulder. She pushes, gently, to get Gura to sit up and out of the water. 

Amelia freezes. 

The very first thing she is aware of is the missing arm. The utter absence of Gura’s right arm has Amelia staring in bewilderment and horror at the bloody stump. The injuries don’t end there. Lacerations crawl along her torso. Her clothes were red with blood. Her neck is missing a chunk, teeth marks dotting along her shoulder. Gura’s head lolls back. Amelia panics. The lifelessness of that sends her into action.

“Gura? Gura, what-” She fights to find a pulse. She puts her finger against Gura’s eyelid and lifts it up. Glassy eyes stare back at her. There’s not a single spark of life there. 

Amelia stares. 

This isn’t right. Gura’s alive in the future. What happened? Did I mess something up? Amelia’s hands flinch away from Gura. The realization that she was handling a corpse made the hairs on her neck stand up. She’s breathing erratically. There’s blood on her hands.

“Gura?” She tries weakly. 

She doesn’t get a response. She doesn’t wait for one. She can’t stand another moment with this nightmare. She grabs her watch and twists the knobs to the future. She needed answers. She stumbles into her living room, panic burning fever bright in her veins. 

“Gura?!” She cries. She’s scared. She drips seawater to the kitchen, but there’s no shark there- there are fewer magnets on the fridge, Gura’s coffee cup is missing- Amelia slips as she scrambles her way down the hall. She throws open the door to the guest room. She’s expecting to see a bed with blue blankets. Gura’s desk was supposed to be in the corner. She’d put up all sorts of posters of her favorite idols. 

The room was completely empty. 

“What?” This is a nightmare. It had to be. The blood between her fingers isn’t lying. “What happened?” What did I do wrong?

Gura isn’t here. Thousands of years ago, Gura is dead. Amelia trembles. She needed to fix this and fix this fast. This was a lot more serious than a small injury. She needed to time travel a lot. 

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It doesn’t take much to fix it. She time travels back before dawn reaches the sky. The sea is crimson. She doesn’t linger long. She was invalidating all her progress, but it was more than necessary. The future was subject to change. She changes that by never seeing the sunrise and falls back into the present. 

Gura looks at her from the dining room. She looks horrified, “Ame?!”

“Gura.” Amelia breathes. The sheer relief of seeing her here, there’s a timeline where I lost you, Amelia falls to her knees. Grua is scrambling from her seat and running to her side. Her socks slide against the floor. She nearly bowls Amelia over. 

“What happened?” Gura is looking at her hands. Amelia can’t stand to look at the blood there. “Ame? You’re freaking me out.” 

“You were dead.” Amelia chokes out. “You had died.”

“What?” Gura places her palm against Amelia’s forehead. She makes a face. “C’mon, bathroom, let's get you cleaned up.” 

Amelia is more than happy to follow her lead. Seeing Gura moving around and mumbling under her breath is a stark relief from what she witnessed earlier. Amelia lets Gura wash her hands, Gura's fingers running her hands under the sink faucet. Feeling drained, Amelia leans her head against Gura’s shoulder. 

“You don’t look good,” Gura whispers. She’s kissing the top of her head. “Ame? What you said doesn’t make sense. If I’m dead back then, how am I alive?”

“I hoped back. I invalidated it.” Amelia closes her eye tightly. “Something happened. You were dead. ”

“I don’t get it,” Gura mutters. “I remember you saving me. That just doesn’t make sense.” 

Amelia mutely shakes her head. It was settling in how grim the situation was. This whole ordeal wasn’t just dire, it was timeline worthy. This all hinged on Amelia saving Gura’s life in a timely manner. If she didn’t- no, that wasn’t an option. She clenches her jaw tightly. 

“I have to try again,” Amelia whispers. “I’m not losing you.” 

“I’m right here.” Gura laughs meekly. She’s nosing the top of Amelia’s head and offering comforting rumbles. “Wanna cuddle?” 

“... For a little bit,” Amelia admits. She wanted to soak in more of Gura as she is now. She doesn’t want to see Gura floating lifelessly ever again. She vows on that as she leans up to kiss her. 

Gura’s lips curl against hers, “It’s okay, sunshine. You’ve got a big brain, I know you can figure it out.” 

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Chapter Text

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It’s the algae. 

Amelia goes back a few times. She’s starting to pay closer attention. Her timeframe is simple. There’s night one, where Gura comes up to her rock with starstruck eyes and asks for a second kiss. Night two Gura doesn’t show up. In the morning, Gura is dead. 

“Have you noticed anything odd?” Amelia tries. 

Gura rests her chin on Amelia’s knees, “Aside from curfew, everything's been kinda red lately. I’m a little nervous since I haven’t seen a friend of mine and she promised me something.” 

“Yeah?” 

“I wanted to make you something,” Gura admits shyly. “I wanted you to be able to see Atlantis.” 

Amelia smiles. 

It’s something in the water. Something hurts Gura. It’s not an illness. It’s not just getting trapped under a boulder. Amelia needed to figure it out or she’d be stuck with a dissonant lonely timeline. 

On night two, she takes a dive. She can’t go down far, not with just her swimsuit. She figures if she gets desperate enough she’ll think about acquiring scuba gear. She holds her breath as she swims down, a flashlight held tightly in her hand as she looks. It’s nowhere near the bottom. She’s focusing more on the red of the ocean. She cups her palms under the algae with fascination. It’s a floating forest of fungi. They’re traveling along in a current. She gathers some in a bottle before going back for air. She dives again. She surveys. She goes back up. 

When she dives again, she’s not alone. 

Maybe it was her flashlight. All her swimming and thrashing about might have attracted unwanted attention. There’s a disturbance in the depths. The algae shudder as something darts through them. Amelia fans her arms out, swimming back. Her hair gets in her face. She looks around to find what she missed. 

She barely has time to throw her arms in front of her face before rows of razor-sharp teeth are clamping down on her skin. Amelia exhales in surprise. Pain startles her and half the oxygen in her lungs is gone in a second. Crimson eyes bare down on her. Amelia keeps her arms in front of her face. 

It’s Gura. 

Amelia can barely breathe. The shark’s hair is red. Her clothes are covered in blood and algae. There are lacerations all over her body. There, like a terrible nightmare, is her bloody stump of an arm. Even with these horrendous injuries, Gura fights her. There’s feral abandon in the way she clenches her jaw tightly onto Amelia’s arm. Her only arm is raking at Amelia. 

Amelia flinches when she feels it cut down across her stomach. She struggles to swim up, air, I need air, but Gura is relentless. Shock and betrayal wear Amelia down. It’s where Gura overpowers her and drags her like a helpless doll. She’s being twisted around. She loses sight of the surface. There’s too much algae to see. 

She accidentally inhales. 

Ocean water burns down her throat. The pressure in her head feels like a balloon about to pop. It’s more than that. She’s losing her sense of self. She can’t breathe. She has the most absurd urge to tear out Gura’s eyes. 

What’s happening to us?

Amelia, with the last vestiges of her strength, grabs her watch tied at her waist. She powers through another bite. Her vision is whiting out. She chokes. There’s too much water in her lungs. There’s something else too, something red and it’s not blood. 

She crashes onto the floor of her house. 

Air burns. She can’t get enough of it. She curls, wheezing, unable to breathe. Is there water in her lungs? She needs to get it out. She starts to claw at her ribs. Get it out, get it out. 

Frantic hands grab hers and tug her upwards. The elevation nearly makes her throw up. She’s spitting up water, too woozy to recollect where she is and what she’d been doing. Wide, terrified blue eyes ground her. 

Gura is guiding her. Step by step. Amelia pants. Her chest feels like it’s collapsing. Wildly horrifying scenarios of her ribs snapping off are making her twitch and squirm. Gura has her tightly by the elbow. She’s taking her to the bathroom with quiet words, things Amelia can’t make out beyond the pressure in her head. The mirror blinds her with a thousand Amelia's. They all have red eyes. 

Gura coaxes her to sit on the floor. Her back is against the bathtub. Amelia can’t stop shuddering. The light is too bright, she’s going to go blind. She’s going blind. She reaches up with every intention to tear out her own eyes. 

Gura grabs her hands. She looks scared. It makes Amelia scared. She needs to breathe but she can’t, no matter how much she breathes she can’t breathe. It’s not enough. Gura is murmuring things to her, sweet words that fly away from her before she can grasp them. She’s tugging off Amelia’s pack. From inside, she’s taking out the emergency kit. Amelia watches her with incomprehension as she starts to clean her hands. Blood, that’s a lot of blood. She’s still bleeding but it’s not enough. She needs to get it out. What was it again? 

Gura holds up a bottle. There’s algae floating in it. Gura looks stricken. Amelia feels like a cloud was parting in her head. 

“Gura.” Amelia croaks. 

“The algae.” Gura hisses. She looks close to tears, “ Fuck, the algae, how did I forget? How could I-” She’s rushing to Amelia, her finger trembling as she tends to her bitten arms. She’s sniffling as she does. “No, no no, I’m such an idiot, I- how could I forget?” 

“Gura.” Amelia tries again. She feels sick. She leans her head back, her eyes closed tightly. The light was making her sick. “You were- you were hurt again. Badly.” 

“You’re not looking good either!” Gura cries. Amelia can feel her tugging bandages over her arms. Gura pauses, her fingers going completely still. Her voice is gravelly quiet as she asks, “Ame, who did this to you?”

“What?” Amelia whispers. 

“Did I do this?”

Amelia doesn’t say anything. She can barely find herself let alone anything Gura wanted. She feels her shark shift, bringing herself closer until her forehead is touching against Amelia’s. Amelia opens her eyes. Gura is looking at her through tears. 

“I should have remembered, I should have told you.” Gura whimpers. 

“You didn’t remember.” Amelia slurs. “I don’t- I can’t really think. It’s messing with my head.” 

“It did that. I remember now.” Gura reaches up to cup her face. Her voice is catching as she says, “Would you stop going back if I asked you to?”

Amelia blinks slowly. Those words feel far away from her. She feels mechanical as she replies, “You’ll die.”

“I don’t want you to die.” Gura pleads. “Ame, you- you’re still bleeding, hold on.”

Amelia is quiet. There’s a wound over her shoulder and one on her stomach. Gura tends to those, little sniffles between each murmur of comfort. Amelia feels like she’s coming back to herself, bit by bit. Her head feels like a bowling ball. 

“I have to keep trying,” Amelia whispers. 

Gura winces heavily. She draws her hand through Amelia’s hair and tugs her until she’s nuzzling the side of Amelia’s head. Amelia exhales. It doesn’t hurt when she does. She feels exhausted and numb. 

“Rest first.” Gura murmurs. “We’ll talk about it later.” 

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Chapter Text

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Amelia breathes. 

Her nose is pressed against Gura’s chest. There’s a movie playing, something old and easily ignorable. It’s background noise. Two layers of blankets are draped over them. The couch is far from comfortable and has to be hell on Gura’s back, but she’s fine being Amelia’s pillow. Encouraged it even, as she practically dragged Amelia to lay on top of her. Claws scratch through her hair. Amelia sighs. Her arms are aching. 

“How’s it feel?”

“I feel like there’s stuff in my lungs,” Amelia complains. “I know there’s nothing there. It feels like there is and it makes me feel insane.”

“You’re still coughing.” 

“Reaction.” Amelia murmurs. She closes her eyes. In her bathroom, a test tube of red algae sat beaten by experiments and observation. While in the bottle, it’d washed out into a dull grey color. Still alive. The red color had been blood. 

Gura kisses the top of her head. Amelia closes her eyes. With Gura’s arms caging her tightly against her she felt safe and secure. She can feel Gura’s tail curling around her leg. Her shark was cooing softly in her ear, gentle words that float in her head. 

“I should have remembered.” Gura’s words touch the crown of her head. “It got in my gills. I remember that now.”

“... ‘sokay.” Amelia mumbles. 

“It freaks me out. I don’t wanna hurt you.” 

“I want to help you.”

“Don’t be this way,” Gura begs. Her hands dig into Amelia’s back as if force alone will keep her there. “You-”

“I’m not losing you either,” Amelia whispers stubbornly. The apartment had been so empty. The look in Gura’s eyes as she floated lifelessly had been empty too. If this was all over the ocean, Atlantis was heavily affected. She needed time to travel around and put up warnings maybe. Would they believe her?

“I can save Atlantis,” Amelia says, more to herself. “I just need time.” 

Gura is quiet. She’s massaging Amelia’s back with thoughtful circles. Amelia sinks against her. It’s nice to have this future again. She hadn’t lost this, not yet. She was going to dig her heel into the sand. 

“You never saved Atlantis though.” Gura murmurs. “Right now, it’s sunk. It’s all gone.” 

“I can change that.” 

“But you didn’t. ” Gura insists. “Right now, right as we speak, it’s been gathering dust down there for thousands of years. That’s how it happened.” 

Amelia frowns. Gura was trying to make a point. She wasn’t getting what she was saying. Time was always subject to change. 

“I can make it happen.”

“You’re not getting it.” Gura sighs. “Ame, what happens if you die? I’ll die too. It doesn’t matter what you do back then, if you die, nothing good happens. I admit,” Her voice cracks, “I admit I didn’t like not knowing why you weren’t saving the rest, but I know now.”

Amelia listens. 

Gura says, “It’s because I told you not to.” 

“Gura,” Amelia says. She feels her heart sinking to her toes. She isn’t expecting Gura to chuckle, a solemn thing. It sounds painful to Amelia’s ears. 

“This sucks.” Gura sniffles, “This sucks! This sucks so bad.”

“You don’t have to-”

“I want to,” Gura whispers. “Just like you want to save me, let me save you.”

Amelia exhales. Gura holds her tightly. The movie noise is soft around the room. For once, Amelia allows herself not to stress about the past. She has as many attempts as she needs to. She just can’t give up. That’s the easy part. 

“Do you remember anything else?” Amelia murmurs. “Anything that’ll help me?”

Gura hums. She’s drumming her fingers along Amelia’s shoulder blade, “Like what?”

“Anything.”

“I remember waking up,” Gura whispers. “I felt safe. You were always there, even if I didn’t want you to be. It made me feel good.” 

Amelia wraps her arms around Gura’s waist. Her arms sting with the movement. Gura grunts with surprise, her caresses falling still. 

“You okay?”

“I’m fine.” Amelia murmurs. She kisses the collar of Gura’s shirt. “I love you.”

“I love you too,” Gura replies automatically. There’s a feathery chuckle in her words. “I wish I could be more help. I barely remember the boulder let alone anything around that time.” 

“Anything before?”

“I waited on the rock for a while. You weren’t there.”

Amelia mulls that over. If day two meant Gura was already algae infected, that meant day one was the night she spent alone. That has Amelia's head spinning. She’d already met Gura on that day though. That’d happened. 

Unless it didn’t. 

Unless Amelia didn’t go to the rock. But why? That sounded mean. Gura would be alone on the rock. She was familiar with that feeling. It wasn’t fun. How would Gura feel? 

You were always there, even if I didn’t want you to be. 

Amelia closes her eyes tightly, “Do you end up hating me?”

“No. Never.” Gura kisses the top of her head. “I was mad. I said a lot of things. You didn’t go away and I just fell in love with you all over again.”

“Spoilers.” Amelia scolds lightheartedly. 

Gura huffs, “I just don’t want anything past me says to hurt you too.” 

“I’ll end up hurting you first.”

“First, last, who cares.” Gura draws her hands up to cup Amelia’s cheeks. Amelia smiles wryly as Gura dips her head to kiss her on the nose. “First kiss, second kiss. First love, second love. First Gura, second Gura. I don’t care. It all ends here, right where you should be.”

“You’re sappy.” Amelia accuses. She ignores how happy her heart is and how warm her face felt. She lets those words guide her to Gura’s lips. Gura swoons, a sigh against her teeth that rattles down Amelia’s spine. This is hers to keep. This is what’s here to stay. 

Amelia would make sure of it. 

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Chapter Text

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She skips the night. 

It’s terrible that it works. She watches how it makes sense. How Gura has both her arms when she floats near the surface. She’s covered in algae, in bruises in bites, but the worst of it is her tail. She’s alive. She’s hurt, but she’s alive. 

Amelia grits her teeth hard. It takes a lot not to grab her watch and try again. There has to be something better than this. Affectionate words stay her hand. She gathers the wounded other half of her heart and takes her to shore. She treats her. She hovers at her side and makes sure she’s on the road to recovery. 

In the present, she lets her head fall onto Gura’s shoulder. Gura leans back in her chair. Her hand is snaking up to touch through blonde hair. A video game is paused on her computer. 

“What’s up?” Gura murmurs. “Good news?”

“You’re alive,” Amelia whispers. “You hate my guts.” 

Gura says, “Yay, good news.” 

Amelia snorts. She’s feeling moody. Gura doesn’t complain when the detective crawls into her lap. She wraps her arms around Amelia’s waist to rest them back on her keyboard. Amelia hears her typing away as she noses at the collar of her shirt. 

“Is there anything I can do to make it better?” Amelia mumbles. 

“The strawberries were cute.” 

Amelia wrinkles her nose, “Strawberries?”

“You kept giving me two,” Gura says. She’s resting her chin on top of Amelia’s head. “A few years after I was like, aw, cute metaphor.”

“A metaphor for what? ”

“Us?”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.” 

Gura tucks her lips close to Amelia’s ear. She gives one solitary nibble. Amelia flinches away with a strangled noise. 

“Food is the way to my heart, Watson,” Gura says. “Do you still have the prosthetic?”

“You shoved it away.” 

Gura huffs, “Did I? Alright, just give it time, I guess.” 

Amelia groans. She didn’t want to bear it, but she had to. Gura was wounded. There was a wild look in her eye, something caught between vulnerability and fury. Amelia wanted to be there for her. She had to tread that ground carefully. Her shark was fragile and she didn’t want to break her. She’d never forgive herself. 

“You’ve been focused on this for awhile.” Gura muses.

“What about it?” Amelia closes her eyes, “I’m spoiling myself with extra Gura. Maybe I should start a third loop and get three of you with quality Ame time.”

Gura says, “Don’t make me jealous, I’ll cry.” 

“It’s literally you. ”

“What if she has better teeth? No, don’t, I can’t do this.” Gura dramatically sniffs. “If I think about you going to the past and she’s a better kisser I’ll actually break our router.”

“ Our router?” Amelia elbows her in the ribs, “That’s my router, bozo.”

“What’s yours is mine,” Gura says. “That’s how girlfriends work, right?” 

Amelia's voice dies in her throat like a deflating balloon. Gura goes still beneath her. Amelia can hear her rapidly tapping the spacebar like it was an emergency exit. It makes Amelia smile. Her cheeks feel hot. 

“I mean,” Gura amends with a squeaky voice, “If that’s how they even work, haha.” 

“Haha.” Amelia echoes flatly. The warm fluttery feeling in her tummy was nestling her closer to Gura. She murmurs, “... Do you want it to work?”

Gura’s hands slowly leave the keyboard. They’re winding around her with gentle purpose. She laughs, a touch hysteric, “What am I, huh? Do you need flowers, a big red sign, or should I hire a translator? If you tell me I’m not being obvious I think you need your brain checked.”

“Okay, stinky, cut the sass.”

“Yes, I want it to work.” Gura kisses her cheek. “I’ve wanted this for thousands of years. I’m actually happy you didn’t visit me over the years because now I’m thinking about you having a secret little rendezvous with another Gura and I wanna pull out my teeth.”

“You’re so weird,” Amelia complains. “How many times do I have to say it’s you. ” She pauses as she gathers that information and frowns. “Wait, I don’t visit you?”

“Kinda. You pop around a bunch. After we go our separate ways, you just…” Gura huffs, “Dance around me. You never let me see you. It was real torture.”

“I could-”

“Nope, no. It’s all fine. It all ends up like this.” Gura peppers kisses over her face. Amelia smiles wryly, amused by her antics. “I get this. At the end of the road, I get this. Man, it sucked but man is it so worth it.” 

“Worth it?” Amelia echoes. She reaches up to cup Gura’s cheeks. Gura goes rigid, her smile wobbling from the attention. Amelia draws her thumb over her cheeks. Wherever her skin touches, she paints red in her wake. Gura looks cute with rosy cheeks. 

“Yeah.” Gura breathes. “If you’ll let me keep you.”

Amelia’s heart is tumbling. She leans forward. Gura leans up into her touch. A kiss to her brow. A kiss at her temple. A kiss on her cheek. At the corner of her mouth. Lips with cherry lip gloss. Amelia sighs. Gura grips Amelia’s elbows like she’s sinking and Amelia is the only one keeping her afloat.

“I’m yours,” Amelia says. 

Gura looks utterly enchanted as she smiles against Amelia’s lips, “May I have seconds, ma’am?”

Amelia gives a theatric sigh, “If you must.” 

Gura happily devours her. 

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Chapter Text

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Amelia starts with food. 

She packs it in a small basket. It’d taken her an hour at the store to find what she thought she’d need. Protein food, for recovery and strength. She has stir fry mixed into a bowl, wrapped in foil to retain what little heat she could of it. Vegetables are aligned neatly. Strawberries in the middle. 

Gura places her chin on her shoulder as she cuts up a cucumber, “Hey.”

“Hey,” Amelia says, distracted with the knife in hand. She can feel playful hands tugging at the back of her apron. She isn’t fooled by the sleepy yawn Gura gives. “What do you think you’re doing?”

“Can I have a piece?” Gura asks. 

“No, it’s for you. Sick you. In the past.”

“It’s technically still me, isn’t it?” Gura grins at her, a leering thing that makes her ears burn. “That’s what you kept trying to convince me, anyway.”

“And it’s true!” Amelia huffs. 

“She won’t notice one missing. It’s fine.” 

Gura reaches for one of the strawberries. Amelia slaps her hand away, “No, bad, no touchy.”

“Ame.” Gura whines. She’s standing on her tiptoes and nuzzling the side of her ear. It’s shameless begging, all behind dramatic lip wobbling and whimpers. “I want a snack.”

“No touchy,” Amelia repeats faithfully. “It’s for your own good!”

“Oh, so you’ll feed her but not me.”

“How many times-”

“Yeah, yeah.” 

“Also,” Amelia turns on the sink faucet. She runs her hand under the water and flickers her fingers at Gura’s face. Gura makes a gargling noise, hissing and clacking her teeth, “You grubby mite, wait your turn.” 

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.

Gura is hurt. 

It’s present in the wariness of her hunched shoulders. She won’t let Amelia near. Her lips curl. Amelia feels like every step she takes needs to be with a purpose. She can’t make any careless moves. She can’t be casual, because nothing about this was casual. It was personal. 

She leaves the basket near her. She isn’t there herself. She listens. Her back is to the tree. There’s rustling underneath it, where the roots shelter her wounded shark. 

Amelia breathes silently. 

And she tries again. 

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.

When she offers it in her hands, she bares her hands for her. She’d done that before, but it’d been underwater. She still has wounds from it. Not once does she ever pull up her sleeves. She’d rather Gura be mad at her rather than mad at herself. She’d tossed it around in her head- how would Gura react to those bite marks? To the truth? 

She keeps it to herself. 

And Gura takes her basket with her hands, not her teeth. There’s wariness in her eyes, but there’s a tenderness threatening to burst there. A lid that’s barely on. A line held so taunt it threatens to break and unravel. 

Amelia’s hands are gentle. 

Gura crumbles for her, piece by piece. Amelia is losing count of what falling in love means when she keeps falling down the same way, over and over again. Its shaky hands against her palm. It’s Gura, her head bowed until her forehead is pressed against Amelia’s chest. Ragged, frustrated breaths and she takes one step and another. 

Amelia guides her. There’s less bite to Gura’s words as the days go on. Faithfully, every day, there’s a box of food for Gura. Healing is the relaxing of Gura’s shoulders. It’s the prosthetic strapped to her tail. Its waves crashing in Amelia’s ears as she’s dragged down below the waves. Her heart leaps in fear for one moment, but there are no red algae. It’s just Gura, her expression torn in grief and yearning as she chases after her lips. 

Amelia cups her face and gives her all she has. There’s a future, Gura, it’s there. I’ll treat you sweetly, I promise. 

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.

When she lands in her apartment, she’s not stopping. She makes her way toward where Gura sings. She’s kicking a laundry bag out of the way as she crouches down to dig into the dryer. She’s belting out the lyrics to a song, her voice echoing. She’s being goofy. Amelia’s heart swells. 

Decades, centuries, millennia you’ve waited. I didn’t understand that. I didn’t get it. I didn’t know what that meant. 

Amelia doesn’t announce herself. She’s falling to her knees beside Gura. Gura jumps in surprise, her head nearly meeting the dryer. She glances over at Amelia, “Holy crap, you scared the-”

Amelia grabs her face and kisses her. Gura squeaks, flailing, as they both fall backward. Amelia laughs. Gura is punching at her ribs. 

“Watson, what-” Gura sputters from the floor. The liveliness and color of her expression, the flush of her cheeks, the spark in her eyes. It’s hope, contentment, living and loving and healed. It’s the end of a tragedy. It’s the victory of the longest wait in history. 

For me, Amelia grins, she did that for me. 

“I love you so much.” Amelia blurts out. The emotions in her chest are uncorking themselves. “You’re so good to me, you deserve so much, I love you. I love you.”

Gura’s eyes are wide. The goofiness is washed off her in a daze. Her lips are parted. She’s a dream. Amelia leans down to kiss her again, a gentle brush of their lips, the softest oath she could give her. 

Gura laughs weakly, “What brought this on?”

“You,” Amelia whispers. “I keep falling in love with you. You have no idea how ridiculously charming you are.” 

“Oh,” Gura preens, a smug smile crawling up her face as she winds her arms around Amelia’s neck, “Well, shucks, you’re making me blush.” 

Amelia presses her forehead against her, where sunshine meets snow and the sea and blue, blue, blue. 

“Tell me everything.” Amelia breathes. “Every story you have. I want to know it all.”

“We’re gonna be lying on this floor for years,” Gura says dryly. 

“Good.” Amelia laughs. “I’m with Gura for years, that’s a good time in my book.” 

Gura makes a noise, something coming over her as she leans forward to take a kiss herself. Amelia falls, once more, and she hopes it’s not the last. 

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Chapter Text

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Amelia is less afraid of the future. 

Before, she wasn’t keen on the idea of spoiling it. She still isn’t. She’s not a coward, though, and she’s solved her problems regarding the present. She spends her days with her hand clasped tightly with Gura. Occasionally, she takes a trip to the past to leave a gift. Her focus is on Gura, the Gura she can hold and love. 

Amelia is human. 

What are thousands of years to just a few decades? Amelia clenches her hand tightly around her watch. How is any of that fair? 

Amelia finds herself in a small cottage. It’s well-kept. There’s a note on the door from people she doesn’t recognize. The dining room is quiet. It’s a long table with well over a dozen chairs. Amelia fondly touches each one and feels the age. The kitchen has touches of life. Sitting on top of the fridge are overgrown plants. A window is cracked open with terrariums perched there. There are cobwebs on the inside of them. She knows she would never let any of the plant homes get to that state. With gentle hands, she’s grabbing each one and taking it to the counter. She fishes around in the cupboards until she gets a fork and pries out the webs. She sifts the soil around. She gives it some water and tests the leaves between her fingers. 

“Poor thing,” Amelia whispers. She places it back where it belongs. 

Amelia pauses by the stairs. There’s a wheelchair folded against it. She runs her fingers over the leather. The color of it is faded a little from use. She ascends the stairs quietly. Along the wall are photos. She cups her hands over her eyes to keep from spoiling herself. When she gets to the second floor, she sees four rooms. One of them is cracked ajar. She can hear a fan whirring alive inside. 

She pushes the door open. 

The future is never a pretty sight, but age is beautiful that way. Amelia walks quietly. The carpet is soft under her shoes. The window is open, the curtains rustling from a calm breeze. Bird song follows her all the way to the bed in the room. There are privacy curtains, but they’re drawn back by lovely blue bows. 

Age is beauty and Amelia thinks age looks really good on Gura. She’d always been small, but tucked under the covers and nearly swallowed by plush pillows, she's frail. The old lady in bed is looking at her shrewdly. Her eyes are foggy. 

“You don’t ever use the ding damn door.” The lady grouses. 

“That’s no fun,” Amelia says. Her cheeks hurt from smiling. Gura has crow's feet around her eyes, laugh lines, laugh lines! One of her hands is curled in a way that speaks of an injury, weathered with care and a brace. Amelia cups her hands underneath it to bring it to her lips and gift it a reverent kiss. “How’s it going?”

The lady harumphs at her, “I was nappin’ and then I caught a god-awful scent.” 

“Hey! I don’t smell.” 

“You reek,” Gura complains. Amelia gazes over her hands. She’d promised no spoilers, but each finger is absent of jewelry. She catalogs that away. “What’s the occasion, hm? You want somethin’?”

“Tell me.” Amelia grabs a chair and pulls it up to the bedside. She places her elbows on the bed, “Got any good stories?”

“Really?” Gura grumbles. “I’m tryin’ to sleep. ”

“You’re not upset to see me?”

“You visit,” Gura says like this isn’t the first time Amelia’s asked this. “I knew what I was gettin’ myself into, honey, believe me.” 

“It’s been a long time.” Amelia murmurs. “I got worried.” 

Gura pats her hands. She gives a tired exhale, sinking comfortably into her cushions, “Well. It was two thousand years ago, you finally got ahold of an ancient key for the vault you were investigating and…”

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.

Aging together is beautiful. Time is subject to change. Amelia wouldn’t be against such a thing. Growing old together, that sounded nice. But was she really growing old with someone when she was the only one aging? She was a bug compared to Gura’s lifespan. It felt unfair. 

Gura waited centuries for a few decades. 

It was worth it, she’s say. It’d be that puppy-eyed affection that’d make Amelia swoon. Amelia likes being human. She’d not keen on finding out any curses that’ll keep her immortal. She likes the way she is. She doesn’t want Gura to change either. They will age. Gura will bury her. 

… That’s this version anyway. 

She has no creed she lives by. There’s nothing that says or dictates what she does. To age and love, that’s beauty, but it’s not a time traveler's way out. The normal way was to age, but there’s so much more. The fantastic and the odd are in her palm. Adventure is a twist of the knob. She’s not the kind to roll over and accept sad, lonely futures. She’s tired of time being unfair to Gura. She wants to break realities with her fist. 

She’s not doing this out of obligation. There’s ferocity in the way she grips her watch. She’s doing this for her, for a future she’s found and one she wants to carve. One that’s not made. One she loves, over and over again. 

A time traveler never dies, she thinks. We just cheat a shit ton. 

Before she leaves, she gives the lady in bed a kiss on the cheek. She’d fallen asleep halfway through her story. Gura looked cute like that, utterly content in her little plush bed to dream about adventures of the past. Amelia tucks her in and in the next moment, she’s gone. 

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Chapter Text

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.

“Is it possible?”

“Possible doesn’t exist.” Kronii informs her over her tea cup. The time warden looks utterly at peace with herself in her lounge. There’s a book open in her lap that she thumbs through. “Impossible is merely an excuse. Time is a gateway to-”

“-infinities beyond possibility.” Amelia quotes. She’s bored. With her arms splayed out over the coffee table, she’s idling her time twisting the knobs on her watch. She’d been doing it for the better part of twenty minutes. The hands were spinning so fast she could feel it whirring beheanth her palm. “Didn’t I tell you that?”

Kronii takes a noisy sip of tea. 

Amelia scowls at her, “Well?”

“Yes.” Kronii sighs. “Don’t you know you’re plenty capable of rewinding a timeline as I am? Stop pestering me.” 

“You’re not answering my question.”

“I already told you-”

“Kronii,” Amelia groans, “Out with it. What’s got your tongue?”

Kronii makes an affronted face, “Nothing has my tongue.” She closes her book with prim finality. Amelia raises an eyebrow as the warden discards it to the side of her couch. “No, to answer your question. There is no way you’ll be repeating the same time you just experienced.”

“Huh.” Amelia drawls. “Why not?”

“Infinities beyond possibility?” Kronii reminds her, looking unimpressed. “If you did have a chance at repeating this timeline, it’d be… beyond possibility.” 

“Small chance?”

Kronii pinches her fingers together, “Non existent.” 

Amelia pinches her fingers together too, “Tiny chance?”

“Fine.” Kronii rolls her eyes. “Think of the most miniscule percentage possible, where the zeros stretch to the millions on a decimal. That’s your chances.” 

Amelia pouts, “I don’t like those chances.”

“Tough.” Kronii takes a haughty sip of her tea. “You’ll learn to like those chances. I’m fairly happy having to not repeat my mistakes.”

Amelia mulls that over. Her watch clicks to every turn of the knob. The smooth metal surface is starting run warm. Kronii watches her impassively as she continues to twist the dials. 

“Did you not like this timeline?” Kronii asks airily. 

“I loved it.” Amelia murmurs. “It was everything for me. For someone else though…” Amelia exhales, “It was way too long.” 

“Sorry to hear that.”

“That’s okay. Second chances, right? I’m just worried she won’t like it.”

“That you’re aging?”

“That it’ll be over.” 

Kronii closes her eyes, “Such is the nature of rewriting time. Memories forgotten, lives gone, nothing to remain of what once was.” 

Amelia eyes her dryly, “Nice poetry, Kronster, did you write that one down?”

“You don’t need to be rude.” Kronii smirks as she takes a sip of tea, “I’m sure with your charm and a good amount of doe eyed pleading you’ll get her to agree.”

Amelia stares.

Kronii blinks at her, “What?”

“Kronii.” Amelia says. 

“What?” Kronii repeats warily. 

“How many second times have I had?” Amelia asks. 

Kronii gives her an amused look. She doesn’t answer her as she takes another sip of tea. Amelia can’t help but smile. 

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.

Gura stares at her watch. It sits on the table between them, untouched, its hands spinning so fast it’s barely decipherable. Amelia keeps her hands rooted into her lap no matter how badly she wants to reach out and snatch it. She feels like she was presenting an organ on display. Her blood was on the table. 

Gura has barely blinked. 

“You don’t need to decide now.” Amelia murmurs. “We have plenty of time to spend together. If you want to grow old, if you want me to grow old, if you want that, just,” Amelia winces but forges on, “take that watch and break it.”

Gura glances up at her. Her eyes are huge. 

“I mean it.” Amelia murmurs. “No more time traveling. No more games. It’d be just us, for however long you’ll have me.” 

“You’re really hung up about that…” Gura whispers. She reaches for the watch and gently takes it. She cups it reverently in both her hands. “Ame, I…”

“Again.” Amelia nearly squeaks, her heart racing at the sight of her watch in someone else’s hands. “You don’t have to decide now. You can if you want. I just, wanted to present an option.” 

“... Thank you.” Gura says. She looks at Amelia through her eyelashes. “You’re doing a lot for me here, aren’t you? You’re rewriting time for me.” 

“We won’t remember each other.” Amelia cautions. 

“Will we still be together? Or at least end up together?”

“Tiny chance.” Amelia whispers, pinching her fingers together. Gura stares at her. Amelia can’t read if she‘s interested or scared. It’s making her nervous. “I just- even if there’s not even a chance we see each other, I just-”

“Want to give me a second chance?” Gura asks, a smile twitching at her lips. “Ame, you don't have to.”

“I want to.” She insists. “I feel like I wasted your time.”

“Never.” Gura vows. She’s getting up and moving around the table. She kneels down, her arms folding into Amelia’s lap. The watch rests there. Gura looks up at her beseechingly. “A moment with you was never wasted.”

“It was without me.” Amelia whispers. “We were born too far apart. That’s too many centuries, Gura.”

“It’s… okay.” Gura struggles. She gently grabs Amelia’s hand and places the watch in her palm. Amelia feels warmth all the way down her spine at the sheer relief of having it back in her possession. Gura eyes her knowingly, fondly. “I won’t break your watch.”

“Okay.” Amelia says. 

Gura stands up. She’s leaning into Amelia’s space to cup her cheeks. She kisses her on the corner of her mouth, “You want to have a second chance with me?”

“We’d have more then one chance.” Amelia laughs weakly. “I didn’t want to pressure you, but this isn’t exactly our first rodeo, according to Kronii anyway.” 

Gura leans back to stare at her. Her lips are parted in surprise. She starts to laugh, peppering kisses over Amelia’s face. 

“You doofus.” Gura laughs wetly. “If this isn't our first rodeo, then we can fall in love again.” 

Amelia leans into the affections, “I didn’t want to pressure you with the-”

“Small chance?” Gura grins at her like a firework, new and sparkling, ferocity and conviction. “Honey, I’d take any chance.” 

The sound of that drives Amelia to stand. Gura flails as Amelia grabs her by the waist and hosits her onto the table. Without wasting a moment, Amelia kisses her, devours her. Gura has her hands fisted into her shirt. Amelia pins her down and turns her lips into a bruised mess. 

Gura breaks from her to say breathlessly, “As if I’d forget a kiss like that.” 

“You better not.” Amelia teases. For good measure, she gives her another. 

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Chapter Text

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.

(“What are the chances we fall in love again?”)

(“I already said, it’s very tiny.”)

(“But it’s there.”)

(“Do you know what we refer to something that’s so tiny a possibility? It’s beyond infinite possibility. It’s impossible.”)

(“... but it’s there.”)

(“... yeah.”)

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.

Gura has an obscene amount of bottles. 

The reef sharks were actual babies about her growing collection. She’s had to move her hoard twice now from greedy hands. She’s frustrated. It’s not even a glamorous hoard, it’s just a bunch of glass bottles! Some have varying shapes, some are rounder than others and there are a few that are weirdly slim, but they’re all just plain ol’ bottles. 

Except they’re special, in a super dumb way. 

She stores them in the underbelly of a grotto. The air pocket inside fogs up the glass of her treasures. The glow of silkworms leaves blue reflections in the glass. It reminds her of a beach and a girl and a dance, but mostly, it reminds her of beautiful blue eyes. 

Gura hunkers down in the sand and burns. 

“I bet she thinks she’s sooo slick,” Gura complains. “All flirty and suave, oh c’mere Gura, let's dance, puh. Puh!” She sticks her tongue out at the bottles. The bottles do not feel anything over this. 

Gura pouts. She doesn’t linger for long. She goes out to grab a bite to eat. She breaches the surface a few times for fun and catches up with the local lemon shark nerds. In the afternoon, she makes her way back to that beach. The smell of pinecones and smoke has made its home here. A mossy rock sits dutifully in the shallows. Gura swims up and throws her arms over it, lazily sagging against it. 

Amelia appears like a dream, because she’s ethereal and always unreal on almost every visit. She appears with a smile, her arms draping over the rock as well, right on top of Gura’s. She’s completely dry. The ocean water is immediately soaking through her blouse. 

Gura raises an eyebrow, “Alright, champ, fess up. Where’s the pizza?”

“Not this time,” Amelia says lightly. “I had important business matters to attend to.” She turns her nose up into the air. 

“More important than me?” 

“Hey, don’t use that against me.” 

“I’m gonna. You left a bottle yesterday.” Gura scowls. “I hate the bottles.” 

Amelia laughs. Underneath the cry of seagulls and the rush of waves, it’s a sparkler in Gura’s brain. She’s addicted to the lull of it, the quiet shyness of it. 

“Sorry, sooo sorry.” Amelia drawls, wiggling her fingers on Gura’s biceps. “I couldn’t make it and I went through all the trouble to send you a note because you neanderthals haven’t invented payphones yet so-”

“Are we still speaking English?” Gura complains, “Stop making up shit, Watson. Are we having pizza or not?”

Amelia pinches her arm. Gura makes a garbled noise. She slaps the water with her tail. Amelia flinches, but she’s grinning. Saltwater dripping from her hair and down her nose, it’s a good look. Gura is almost tempted to splash her again just to see how good it can get. 

“No pizza,” Amelia confirms possibly the worst day of Gura’s life. Amelia leans closer with an eyebrow wiggle, “Maybe kiss instead?”

There’s a thermal vent in Gura’s chest and it’s exploding up her throat out into a horrified whine. She kicks the rock in distress. Amelia is laughing so hard that she almost falls off entirely. 

“Screw you!” Gura cries. 

“But your face is so cute right-”

“Screw you!” Gura puts real vindication in this one as she grabs onto Amelia’s arms and pulls her. Amelia yelps as she’s abruptly braced against the rock. Gura is acting purely on spite as she leans forward. Amelia, with her hands captured and an impish smile, looks just good enough to ravage senselessly. 

Despite that, Gura is only brave enough to kiss her on the corner of her mouth. Amelia is giggling soundlessly, her shoulders shaking with amusement. Gura scowls, her face warm. 

“Alright, wise guy.” Gura lets go of her arms. Amelia dramatically flops onto the rock. “You got your kiss.”

“That was not a kiss,” Amelia says. 

“It so was, there was lip touching happening there, bozo.”

“You big baby.” 

Gura grumbles. Amelia crosses her arms, smiling at her, nearly nose to nose with her. Despite this beach already being a secluded wonder, the proximity felt like it was their special place. Their words were a secret meant only for them. The world and its ocean song didn’t matter compared to the warmth in Amelia’s voice. 

“Did you like my note at least?”

“No,” Gura says petulantly. “I’d rather have the real deal. I can’t even keep the note!” 

“You could if you weren’t such a klutz.” 

Gura snaps her teeth at her. Amelia does it back. Fondness swells in Gura’s chest. The feisty human with flat teeth is baring her nonexistent fangs at her. It melts Gura down to her core and has her leaning against the rock. Amelia notices the change. Her expression is softening. 

“How about another dance?” Amelia suggests. “You and me, our beach. Lovely night, right?”

Gura snorts, “Is that your best date idea?”

Amelia’s cheeks grow pink, “What? You don’t like it?”

“Idiot,” Gura says. “I love it.” 

The gooey expression Amelia is giving her is too much. She slaps her tail on the water again. Amelia yelps like a dog that just had its tail stepped on. Her eyes are bright and there are water droplets running over her freckled cheeks. It’s absurdly unfair how pretty she is. 

“What was that for?” Amelia complains. 

“For being stinking cute,” Gura says back. She reaches up to grab Amelia’s tie. “You want a real kiss? Buckle up.”

“That’s so dorky you-”

Gura doesn’t let her breathe another word. Dancing is all but forgotten as they spend their time huddled close on that rock, breaths inches apart and names written on their tongues. 

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.

(“It’s nice to think about at least.)

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Chapter Text

.

.

( “Do you think we’ll be different?” )

( “Different how?”)

( “I dunno… something different than what we have now.” )

( “Would that be bad?” )

( “No. It sounds exciting.” )

.

.

Gura’s toes are numb.

Snow is in all kinds of uncomfortable places. It’s touching her neck. There’s a chunk of it in her boot that’s making her foot burn from the cold. She breathes shakily. Her cheeks hurt. Her hair is dripping wet. She sniffles. When she finds a bench to sit on, she has to tuck her tail into her lap. There’s a family occupying the other side of it that’s taking up space. She doesn’t want to risk getting stepped on. 

Step one was prying her mittens off. She gasps through her mouth, her heart rate starting to calm down as the warmth of the lodge settles on her. Her fingers are cherry red. With no warmth to be offered, she sticks them in her mouth. 

“Gura, ew.” 

Amelia appears beside her. She’s crouching to set down two steaming hot mugs. Gura salivates. Hot chocolate! Instead of giving her prize right away, Amelia takes her mouth-washed hands and rubs them between her gloves. Gura lets her. She feels snotty and gross, but Amelia has a bruise scored across her jaw that’s gonna shine for days. 

“Does it hurt?” Gura asks. 

“Only if I touch it,” Amelia mutters. There’s water in her eyelashes. Her bangs are matted to her forehead from melted ice. Her cheeks are a rosy pink. It’s unfair how gorgeous she looks while disheveled. “What were you aiming for anyway?”

“I dunno, the sticks betrayed me,” Gura complains. “Who goes skiing? This blows.”

“ We go skiing,” Amelia says pointedly. She looks amused. “Gura, if we can’t get down this goddamn mountain, we’ll have to take the lift down.” 

The sheer idea of enduring a ten-minute lurching, stomach-twisting ride made Gura gag. That was too many feet in the air. She likes her feet on the ground. Sharks aren’t meant to fly. The plan had been to sled down this hilltop and she wouldn’t have to endure the lift at all. Her ski just had to get stuck and in all her dramatic flailing she accidentally whacked Watson clear across the face. She’d gone down like a lifeless sack of potatoes after the blow. Gura had nearly had a heart attack, ready to call in emergency rescue if needed. 

Thankfully, no blood. 

The events replaying in her head make her anxious. She paws out of Amelia’s hands and reaches up to cup her face. She’s careful around that bruise. It’s a nasty thing, mottled purple and green around the welt and ugly yellow where it meets skin. Gura whines in her throat. It looked bad. 

Amelia is trying to smile, but she hadn’t been able to use many expressions without wincing from the pain. It only makes Gura more frustrated. 

“It’s not your fault.” Amelia soothes. 

“Yeah, I still feel guilty,” Gura complains. She’s tenderly touching the bruise. Amelia hisses. “We should put something on it. Do they got ointment here?”

“I can talk to the rangers,” Amelia says placatingly. She’s reaching down to pick up the cocoa. When she tries to hand Gura hers, Gura shakes her head. Amelia frowns but quickly winces, “ Ah, shit- uh, you don’t want it?”

“No, I want it,” Gura grumbles. She scoots over and pats the bench. “C’mere, lay down.”

“Gura,” Amelia whines.

“C’mere.”

Amelia obliges, not without grumbles and complaints under her breath. She curls up against Gura. Gura places the hot cocoa beside her, careful not to spill it. Amelia’s head is in her lap. The god-awful bruise is facing her, but she had greater plans for that. She retrieves her ice-bitten mittens and places one on Amelia’s cheek. 

Amelia cries in her throat. Her eyes are closed tightly. She’s tense as a bowstring. Gura coos at her, rubbing her shoulder and whispering sweet words. It takes a while to get Amelia to relax. Even then, she breathes heavily through the pain. 

“Better?” Gura asks. 

“I couldn’t feel it outside,” Amelia mutters. “Once we got inside it started hurting real bad.”

“You got all warmed up then. It’s gonna hurt like a bitch for a while.” 

Amelia groans. Gura tends to her, flipping the mitten over when it grows too warm and replacing it with her other mitten. The cold does wonders for her detective. Despite them running to the lodge to warm up, the cold relieves the pain. Amelia exhales. It doesn’t sound stressed. 

Gura kisses her on the temple. She brushes her blonde bangs away to kiss her forehead. Amelia hums. Gura is happy to pamper her. It helps alleviate the guilt for beating her in the head. Later, Amelia sits up, her hair a spectacular mess. They cradle hot cocoa together and watch the snowfall from one of the lodge windows. At some point, Gura gets up and retrieves ointment and a gauze patch. She has Amelia’s chin cupped in one hand while she works gently, mindful of every wince Amelia shows. When the bruise is properly covered Gura feels like she can finally breathe. 

Amelia leans against her with a sigh. The exhaustion dripping off her tugs at Gura’s heartstrings. She winds an arm around Amelia’s shoulders and kisses her messy wet blonde hair. 

“Ready to go?” Gura asks hopefully.

Amelia chuckles, “Yeah. Let’s get off this hell mountain.” 

“... wanna get another hot cocoa?”

“Yeah. This time, try not to lose it at the lift, alright?”

“You’ll never let me live that down, huh?”

“Never ever.” 

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Chapter Text

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.

(“We might end up as enemies.”)

(“Yeah, that could happen.”)

(“Not scared of facing off against sharky?”)

(“I’ve faced you before. I’m still here.”)

.

.

Amelia ducks under a hail of gunfire. Her ribs feel like they’re going to close in around her. Her palms feel sweaty, but there’s righteous ferocity itching at every nerve in her body. Her left leg is numb. The concoction was searing through her system. She felt like she was having a heat stroke. There’s a bullet in her leg. 

She ducks behind a broken wall. The rocks cry from bullets impacting against them. The whizz of metal makes Amelia’s heart pound. She’s reloading her gun. Her hands are smeared pink. She slips cartridges between her palms. It makes her swear. She can’t feel her pinky but she’d rather not look at the bloody mishappen mess it's become if it’s even still there. 

Footsteps. 

Amelia rolls, her gun singing as she fires off several shots. Body armor clinks with every bullet impact. Only two of the five approaching her even go down. She has guns aimed at her. With gritted teeth, she’s resorting to violence like a maniac. She ducks low and charges, a viper in tall grass. She punches the legs of one and full-on bodily tackles another. She feels the bite of a knife in her stomach, but the concoction makes her wired. She’s a machine working on puppet strings. It’s more practical to score headshots while inches away from them anyway. 

She doesn’t have time to gather herself. Her assailant had caught up with her. There’s rage in sea blue eyes. Snowy white hair was done up into a bun but messy and frazzled. Her nose is broken and pouring blood over her mouth and down her neck. Her uniform is a mess of blood. Her arm is tucked close to her chest. 

Shoulda broke your leg instead. Amelia thinks darkly. 

The assailant aims her gun at Amelia. The sharp red teeth of the firearm make the hair on Amelia’s neck stand up. She’s grabbing one of the bodies below her and hoisting him up as a human meatshield. The body jerks from the impact of the first bullet. The rest are fired in frustration when nothing makes it to Amelia. 

A cry of anger. Rapid footsteps approaching. Amelia grabs the knife off her meat shield and shoves him at her attacker. Her assailant dodges the weak throw, eye slitted as she moves her gun for Amelia’s head. The angry red teeth painted on the gun are a notch to every victory, every life she’s claimed. It’s a predator leaping for its prey. 

Amelia smacks her knife against the barrel. The shot misses her, whipping over her shoulder and brushing through her hair. Amelia chases the opportunity. She’s stepping into the snowy woman’s space and forcing the blade of the knife into her palm. A half-choked scream as the gun falls from her hands. 

Amelia nearly throws up when the girl grabs the knife in her stomach and yanks. She pitches forward, her body losing its balance. The concoction helps her, but it can’t fight this. She was dying. Her assailant was raising the bloody knife vengefully. When Amelia falls against her, the knife finds a home in her shoulder. It was meant for her neck, but her assailant is wheezing through troubled breaths. 

Amelia’s rifle is against her attacker's stomach. When they fall, the impact against the ground sets off her gun. There’s a violent burst, one that rocks her and leaves her shaken. Her assailant is frozen, heaving for air, fretful whimpers with each breath. Amelia lets the rifle fall to the side. She hears the knife clatter by her head. Without much care, Amelia slumps against the girl. 

We spent our whole lives trying to kill each other. Amelia thinks hazily. I wish I knew why. 

Shaky hands wrap around her. They’re trembling with pain. There are gasping breaths in her ear. It’s a horrible way to go, Amelia thinks. She can feel blood soaking her shirt. Not all of it is hers. She’s too tired to even open her eyes. 

The girl is trying to speak. It’s between gasps and wheezes, but she can’t make words. She struggles. Her breaths grow uneven. She’s gripping Amelia’s back tight enough that Amelia can actually feel it. 

Amelia croaks out, “Who are you?”

The girl doesn’t answer. Amelia can’t tell if she tried to, in those last few moments. The hands against her back go slack. The struggling stops. Amelia rests there, drained, every hurt coming back to her bit by bit as her concoction wears off. If she worked quickly, she could save herself from this. She’d never handled injuries this severe, but she’d saved the lives of people who had it just as worse. 

She doesn’t move. She turns her nose against snowy hair. Strawberries, she thinks hazily. It’s a strange thing to think of, especially of the person who'd been hunting her for the better part of her life. She feels melancholy. She feels nothing, but she wants to feel. She isn’t sure who she is or what she wanted, in the end. Her head is smoke. She exhales, tension unwinding from her like the closing curtain on the final act.

Maybe in another life, Amelia thinks, we could have been friends. 

.

.

(“That’s too sad to think about.”)

(“It’s not like we’d remember it.”)

(“Still. I want to believe we live happily.”)

(“Even if we’re just friends?”)

(“Especially if we’re just friends.”)

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Chapter Text

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.

(“Again, this is all hypothetical.”)

(“So we could meet but not fall in love, right? That counts, doesn’t it?”)

(“Of course it does. I’d rather you be my friend instead of not being there at all.”)

.

.

Amelia chews on a pencil. Her computer screen was tabbed to the group chat, but there wasn’t any activity on that end, not when it was so late it was bleeding morning into how late it was. She yawns. She leaves herself in voice chat and tabs back to her game.

Her character is idling in front of a crafting station. The weird house everyone had crafted is settled around her. Irys saw fit to change out the structure from wood to stone, which didn’t really do much. It was nice for structure integrity and, she guesses, look a bit more put together. It’d at least make other clans think twice before trying to kill them. Usually, Mumei was enough to make them think twice anyway. 

She checks her inventory. The pipes she’d made were ready. She was halfway done with her greenhouse attachment to the house. It’d help feed everyone, but more importantly, the food buffs would be nice. She’s being lazy about the construction. 

She’s about to tab out when another character starts to jump around her screen. Amelia laughs. When the house had been first built, no one was wholly aware of how much space characters took up inside buildings. The ceiling was a fraction too low. Now, whenever anyone jumped in the house, their character would hit their head on the ceiling. This had the comical effect of the character rebounding against the floor extremely quickly. 

Gura’s character was currently bunny hopping around her. After a moment, she hears a blip as someone joins the voice call. 

“Well, well, well.” Amelia drawls.

“Bowson.” Gura greets, her mic crackling like she’d just fished it out of her toilet. “Help.”

“What?”

“I’m going quantum- I’m going between planes of existence- Watch out! I’m exploding!” Gura cries. Her character on the screen activates their sprint button. While jumping, they’re practically shaking up and down. Eventually, the walls are no longer enough to hold her character. With a stutter, she falls through the floor. 

“Goodbye,” Amelia says blankly. 

Gura makes gagging noise, a dramatic death while Amelia receives the clan message Gorbus has died. Amelia rolls her eyes. Across the room from the crafting station, Gura reappears from one of the beds like a jumpscare. Silently, her character faces her. 

Amelia can’t help but laugh, “You done?”

“I’m done,” Gura confirms. “Whatchya up to?”

“Crafting.”

“Ohhh, our Bowson is crafting.” Gura drawls playfully. “Say it ain’t so!” 

“This isn’t DDO.” Amelia huffs. “I like this kinda stuff.”

“She says after a two-month hiatus.”

“I was playing other games!”

Gura laughs, “No, I can’t say anything. I took a longer break. Bae was organizing a raid the other week but I wasn’t feeling up for it.” 

Amelia idly organizes the pipes in her inventory. She says, “It wasn’t very riveting. None of the clan was online when we attacked so we ended up just looting the place and burning it down afterward.”

“What was the loot?”

“We got a few battleaxes and gems. Fauna made us do two trips to raid all their food. It got really tense, too, we thought they’d log in at any moment and we’d be mid-raid still. Fauna was like, I’ll die for these carrots.” 

“Really? Why?”

“Same reason I’m making a greenhouse.” Amelia sniffs. “We keep running out or running low. No food, no stamina. No stamina, no dodge. No sprint. If we get attacked, we’re dead.”

Gura mumbles, “What about the potato farm?”

“It’s not automated,” Amelia says. “The greenhouse is automated.”

“Really? How does it work?”

Amelia preens. She explains it in caveman terms, but she’s happy to explain it anyway. She’d taken a long break from it because the reward didn’t feel as good as she imagined. Gura asks questions. They spend twenty minutes talking about what kinda food to grow.

“More potatoes.” Gura votes.

“Fauna already called dibs on apples,” Amelia says, amused. 

“Okay, whatever, apples.” Gura scoffs. Amelia can hear the smile in her voice. “You know what we should be doing?”

“What?”

“Fishing.”

Amelia snorts. She pointedly moves her character to face the crafting bench. She can hear Gura’s character scrambling behind her before she’s jumping around in Amelia’s personal space. 

“C’mon, I need a bodyguard, I don’t want to get ambushed again!” Gura whines. The reason her break had been so long wasn’t from burnout, but rage quit. Enjoying any kind of fishing solo is asking for a blade to your back. Gura had enough and left for other games. Amelia had found the whole thing funny. The rest of the clan had mounted a revenge raid. 

“I don’t think I’d be able to do much.” Amelia cautions. “If it’s an ambush-”

“Ame, c’mon.” Gura laughs helplessly. “How clear do I gotta be that I wanna spend time with you?”

Amelia feels warm. She kicks her feet, startled by the sincerity. It’s welcome. She turns her character very slowly to face Gura. Gura does a funny double-take. It’s punctuated by the mouse sounds echoing in Gura’s mic as she moves in circles. 

“Fine,” Amelia says. “I’ll shoot Mumei a message too.”

“Bloodshed, violence.” Gura chants. “I want trout, give me trout, we want trout!” 

“We want trout.” Amelia echoes with less enthusiasm. Fishing kinda falls on the back burner as they end up talking about a new movie that's out. She spends the evening with Gura and the sound of her jumping so hard she falls through the map.

.

.

Chapter Text

.

.

(“Do you think we’ll ever be different?”)

(“Different how?”)

(“Like, you won’t be a detective.”)

(“Oh, that’s weird.”)

(“Right? I can’t imagine it.”)

.

.

Gura wakes up with sand tickling her nose. She sighs. She doesn’t want to move, not yet. Not when she’s in that blissful limbo between dozing and just barely awake. The kelp fronds are cocooned wonderfully around her. The pull of the sea can’t reach her. Not here. She's secure and comfy. 

… where the hell is her girlfriend?

Okay, maybe there's one upsetting detail. Gura gropes around the sandbed but there’s not a koi tail to be found. The other half of her heart was missing. 

“Ame.” She complains pitifully to absolutely no one because her girlfriend is, tragically, missing.

“What?” Amelia yells from inside the house. 

“Come back to bed.” Gura whines. 

“Don’t you want breakfast?” Gura can hear her rummaging around, likely distracted with whatever she’s conjuring in the kitchen. Gura groans. She doesn’t want to get up but she wants to see what Amelia’s up to. She weighs the positives of it. She may get kisses. That was also a negative. She could get scammed. 

“Gura?” Amelia calls impatiently, “C’mon, get up.” 

Gura childishly buries her head into the seaweed. She’s dragging out her comfort as long as she can, even if she does feel herself dragged from that blissful limbo tick by tick. There’s a movement by the doorway. The water moves as Amelia swims over to her side. She’s nestling close, her arms folded onto the bed. Through the kelp, Gura can feel her tail coiling over hers. 

Gura grumpily turns her head away. She can feel the smile aimed at her. It’s making her warm. She was trying to win here not grovel. 

“Gura.” Amelia sings. She’s nudging Gura’s shoulder. “C’mon. Aren’t you hungry?”

“I want to sleep a bit more.” Gura exhales. “Can’t you stay?”

Amelia laughs, “What are you doing? You’re being lazy.”

“So? Let me be lazy.”

“That doesn’t mean drag me down too!” 

“It’s my day off.” Gura mumbles. “I wanna be lazy. Do you know how long they had me guarding the palace the other day? My fins are killin’ me here.” 

Amelia coos at her, “Aw, poor thing.” 

“Okay, you don’t have to be mean.”

“I’m not! You grumpy gills.” Amelia cuddles closer to Gura. She’s winding her arms into the kelp fronds to snake her hand up and over Gura’s back. Gura exhales. She’s getting what she wanted, though she has a hunch Amelia is only being clingy to get her out of bed faster. 

Well. She’d just have to play her game.

Gura rolls over. Amelia squawks, her tail slapping against the bed as Gura presses her whole body weight down on the koi. Amelia doesn’t fight her. She comically goes limp, making dying noises as Gura lays on her cacoon style. 

“She’s killing me.” Amelia faux cries. 

Gura wiggles around. It takes her some effort to find a better position. Amelia hisses when she accidentally gets elbowed. Gura apologizes under her breath. She’s settling down on top of her koi, limply resting her head into the crook of her neck. Idly, she’s starting to wrap Amelia in the kelp as well. Mine now. 

Amelia says, “Well. Our kitchen is going to explode.”

“You’re being dramatic.” Gura murmurs. “I don’t smell the cooker on. You liar.”

“Oops.”

“Yeah, oops.” Gura nuzzles against her neck. Gemstones she smells, not the burning of her kitchen. It’s the baubles hanging from Amelia’s hair. She noses one, the pretty blue gem tapping against her cheek. Amelia sighs. It sounds lovely to her ears. 

“Okay, a few minutes.” Amelia murmurs. It was probably the greatest admission of defeat Gura was gonna get. Amelia’s letting herself get comfortable in the seaweed bed. Gura savors that. She’s twining her tail with Amelia’s. She’s sinking into every part of her and not letting go. It’s a lovely warmth. Amelia’s pulse is in her ears. It beats fast one two and then soft again. It picks up in crescendo when Gura runs her hands up and down Amelia’s hips. 

“Are we sleeping?” Amelia asks airily.

“I’m sleeping,” Gura says. She presses her lips to Amelia’s neck. Her koi hums. She likes that sound. She presses kiss after kiss, languid and slow. A touch that she relishes, a taste she savors. 

She doesn’t know when the lines between wakefulness blur and she’s left dozing away. She hasn’t moved much. Amelia must have nudged her off her at some point. Her koi is tangled in her arms and wrapped in kelp. Her hair is askew. Gura wonders if she spent time in the morning making it pretty. She wonders if she knows how beautiful she looks when she’s asleep and every blue gem in her hair is shining under moonlight. 

Moonlight? Gura sleepily grimaces. We slept the whole day away. 

She wasn’t going to be the one to break the news. She decides, whatever. If she was going to live this lazy and be able to have this- golden bangs falling softly over her nose, eyelids fluttering from a dream, lips parted as she sleeps, beauty and love, a constellation of freckles, sun-kissed skin and pretty jewels- she wasn’t going to move an inch. She’s nose to nose with her koi, exactly as she wants it. 

I could sleep anywhere with you. I could be anywhere with you. Where you are, I want to be. Gura kisses her softly. This is how I want to spend every day. This is my dream. 

She doesn’t need to be asleep to live it. 

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Chapter Text

.

.

(“What are the chances this happens again?”)

(“This? Like… us?”)

(“Yeah. This time. The way we fell in love, the way we met, everything.”)

(“Impossible.”)

(“Is it impossible or is it just too small of a chance?”)

(“... I don’t know.”)

.

.

Gura watches a school of fish swim by. She’s leaning her chin on her window. The streets outside are filled with chatter. A sea horse swims by her nose. She sniffles. 

“I mean, if anything is a rumor around here, it’d be what the palace guard has been up to.” Hammerhead gossips. Gura can hear the three of them convening at her table. There was the crunch of bones in the air as they snacked. A board game of hermit crab shells was set up. Gura leans her cheek on the window to observe them. 

The reef shark was holding a pair of violets. She looked nervous. Hammerhead looked too distracted to care that she could be winning. She kept yammering, “Not that I’m interested in rumors anyway.”

“I wanna find a cool rumor.” Lemon shark says. “A mystery.”

“None of that exists.” Hammerhead sniffs. “What kinda rumor would be interesting like that anyway?”

“Don’t you wanna solve a crime?”

“Solve my fashion disaster first.”

Gura snorts. She looks back at Atlantis. She’s bored. The pearl blue limelight of the city is an everyday sight. The overhead baubles glow as they pass overhead. She sees the light of an angler as it moves past the city. The shadow of a whale is casting the palace in darkness. A few Atlanteans are swimming across the road, laughing as they duck into a cafe. 

Were they a couple? Gura wonders. She thinks about love and wrinkles her nose. She hadn’t thought about it. She kind of wants it. She doesn’t want to admit she wants something so fluffy. It’s something she passively thinks about and imagines in her life. 

She feels like she’s supposed to. 

“What about you, Gura?” Reef shark pipes up. Her shells are missing. Gura can only assume that meant she’d suffered a colossal defeat and was looking for a distraction. 

“What are you guys blabbering about?” Gura complains. “Rumor this, rumor that. I wanna go get food already.”

“It’s not a rumor, it’s real!” Hammerhead says, “There’s a weird human on the surface.”

“That’s not a rumor.” Lemon shark says. “That’s not even a mystery! You’re just making that up.”

“I swear I’m not-”

Gura gets up with a sigh. The others are scrambling to follow her as she leaves. She doesn’t look up. The idea of a human up on the surface sounded stupid. She was hungry. 

“What about the cafe?” Reef shark suggests. 

Gura thinks about the couple probably inside and grimaces. “No. Let’s go get sushi.”

It clears out her mind. She sits at a booth with her friends and chats. Warm food does wonders for her. She’s content to doze off listening to the reef shark and hammerhead argue about shellfish. Tummy full, she thinks, shark happy. 

.

.

Rumor becomes reality. It circulates and bends around Atlantis. A fancy little rumor most snort and laugh at. Her friends flutter over this rumor with happy little gossip. Gura isn’t immune to the fantasy. 

Why is there a human up on the surface? Hammerhead wants to know. Gura ignores her friends to the best ability. She wants to do fun things. She doesn’t want to hear about all the weird things happening at the palace. She swims ahead. She sits with more space between them and her. 

“She’s alone on a rock,” Hammerhead whispers. 

“Why?”

“Who knows? Don’t you guys wanna find out? What if she’s some kind of mage? She could have treasure.”

“What? Go up there? Count me out. I don’t wanna get zapped by some mage.”

Lemon shark pipes up, “Yeah! What if it’s bait? Pirates can be nasty.”

“Oh true,” Hammerhead says. She looks disappointed. “Well, it sounded fun.” 

Gura frowns. She thinks about it as she swims home. The bottom of the ocean is dark, but the darkness tonight feels like a looming threat. The moon is a shallow light. The orb lights around her feel like the final torch. There are fewer fish overhead these days. It’s rare to find whales anymore. A human? Don’t make her laugh. 

She looks up. 

(“Would you… want us to repeat this?”)

(“I wouldn’t mind.”)

(“Really?”)

(“Don’t ‘really’ me, I love you. I loved falling for you. I don’t think about the bad parts. I only think about you and that’s good enough for me.”)

Gura takes a deep breath. 

(“The bad parts…were kinda bad though.”)

(“It ends here, where it’s good. There were good parts where it was bad too. Every moment made us, us, ya know?”)

(“... Yeah.”)

(“Do you not want to repeat?”)

(“I'd repeat forever if I could.”)

.

.

Gura swims for the surface.

.

.

THE END