Chapter Text
Experienced sailors knew that sirens got into your mind; they sorted through your memories, choosing exactly what yearning to attack you with. So as this siren saw a ship approach their lair, she smiled to herself with her pointy teeth. They weren’t exactly evil; it was just in their nature, they were hungry; she tried not to care for the lives inside the bodies they ate, but it was hard when she dove into his happy memories right before sinking her teeth into their flesh.
The ship was closer, not much more time to think.
She decided to go for who she assumed was the captain of the ship—a blue cape wrapped around his sun kissed shoulders, and even before she started singing, she could feel his pain.
When the ship came close enough, she got to work. “Don’t you miss me?” she asked, hoping that she was close enough to the truth. But something was wrong, she noticed, as her voice left her chest and reached the Captain’s ears. She was a woman now, a queen, with a child, waiting for him on an island. However, what the woman’s name was she couldn’t decipher, or the name of the child, hell, even if they were a girl or a boy. But just through the memories of the Captain, the siren just knew that the woman waiting for him was full of hope and strength.
The captain seemed drawn to her voice, and the siren swam towards the ship so she could see him closer. Perhaps the distance was too much, and once she could look him in the eyes, all the details would come to her.
“More than you know,” he sang back, in tune to the melody in her head. The siren repressed a frustrated hiss when no, her theory wasn't correct—she’d have to proceed as if her eyes were closed, taunting on what could lure the Captain into the sea.
“Then jump in the water and kiss me!” she said, splashing the water around her, hoping that her spell turned her feathers and monstrous, big red eyes into the sweet memory of his beloved.
“Penelope, I’ve told you this before,” he sang, finally giving the siren a name. “You know I’m afraid of the water.”
The siren thought this was strange. A sailor—a captain , afraid of the water? She usually could detect lies, but this man, for some reason, wouldn't let her access more information than the initial.
“I’ll make sure that you are safe and sound,” she continued nonetheless. Then, even if it was directly against what sirens had always done for centuries, she took a risk, one she shouldn't have had to take. “Come play with me and our daughter, and let's watch our love leave the ground!”
The captain looked away, giving the siren an even more difficult task. She couldn't read him, but apparently she’d guessed correctly, as he didn’t correct her. What was happening? She was the one with the softest feathers, most beautiful voice, the one who emerged to the surface to sing while her friends awaited behind the rocks of their island, lurking underwater, waiting for the men to jump for them to devour. “Oh, I would; but I’d be suffering trying to float the whole time…”
“I would take the suffering from you!” she said, deciding the chorus as she went. The exchange between the two was making such a pretty song; it'd be a shame his voice would never be heard again after today.
“Ooh, as good as that sounds, right here I’m just fine,” he sang. He was one hard to crack one, the siren thought, as she made an effort to harmonize with the last note he sang, repeating the last phrase, hoping for him to give in.
“I can take the suffering from you!”
“You know that I prefer my feet on the ground!”
She had to make a big effort not to groan. “I will take the suffering from you.”
Something in his face changed as she switched from hypotheticals to concrete—she will take that suffering from him. He sighed, a slight blush appearing on his cheeks, as the siren held back a smile. Almost there.
“Fine, but only if you answer a question or two—”
The siren almost screamed of frustration. She was starting to lose track of the character she was attempting to impersonate—all she knew was that she was his wife, Penelope. There was no specific memory she could evoque to lure him into her hands. Nevertheless, she smiled widely; “Of course!”
The captain laid forward, ready to start talking. Okay, this was it—she’d have all the information she’d need, finally convince him, and after he was done, it’d be only a matter of time until the rest of the crew swam towards them. “Okay, so, let’s say I was on the run, or hiding, from—I don’t know, Poseidon; and let’s say he blocked the way home, with giant waves and giant storms!”
She bit back a smile. A ship that not even Poseidon could sink? That explained everything. It didn’t matter, anyway. Poseidon acted on strength, while she acted on seduction, and one was way more powerful than the other. “Oh, no!”
“How am I to evade him? How am I to get home? Which route should I take? Where am I supposed to go?”
This—oh, this chilled her to the bone, when she thought she was close, she was so close to winning, but for some reason, the captain still remembered where he was originally heading. She could almost feel her sisters’ frustration from underwater, waiting for their food, which was taking way too much time. However, the siren knew she wouldn’t win anything by contradicting the captain, so she answered the question; not like the solution to his problem was exciting.
“He will chase you, high and low, so find a place he’d never go,” she saw him nod, “the one way you’ll get home, is sailing where he’s scared to go, oh, it’s through the lair of Scylla.”
The high notes took a strain of frustration on her vocal chords. It sounded raw, desperate, hungry, even a little rough, and she’d definitely pay the consequences. Didn’t matter, though, as she saw the captain’s face go pale; the more scared, the more vulnerable, the easier to manipulate. “No.”
“This is your only way home, the lair of Scylla.” She knew where he was headed, finally. She hadn’t heard of an important sailor from that particular island, Ithaca, since the war in Troy.
“But Scylla has a cost.”
He was lost in his thoughts—the perfect moment to strike, make him jump. “Well, you asked, and now you know; now jump in the water!” she smiled brightly at him, trying to mimic the ways of a loving, playful wife, eager to laugh with the husband she missed so much.
“Penelope, why? You know I’m too shy, and terrified!” he sang as he tucked his hair behind his ear, in a gesture the siren couldn’t help but silently giggle at.
“I would take the suffering from you,” she shot back, satisfied at finally getting back to the chorus. He didn’t seem to realize, but he kept the original melody, changing the excuses.
“Ooh, for you I would die, but can’t you let me stay dry?”
No. “I can take the suffering from you!”
“You should come on to the ship, we’ll jump at the same time!” She just wanted to jump at his neck. She was hungry!
“I will take the suffering from you!” she tried, knowing what effect the command had on him on the last chorus.
And then, he gave up. Finally, after two full choruses–it usually took her two verses at most. His shoulders fell, a smile crept upon his lips, and the sun seemed to shine more on his face. “Ah, the things I do for you.”
The siren was ready to welcome him in the sea by sinking her claws into his stomach, watching the water around them turn pink.
But then—
Then, a heart piercing scream washed over the shore of the island, the ship, and made the feathers on the siren’s face ruffle. And she didn’t even realize at first that it was her own.
There was a net beneath her. Her bird claws were tangled on the ropes, suddenly cold, away from the sea—and the smile of the captain turned into a merciless one. What? What was happening?
“Let’s cut this charade, you are no wife of mine.”
She’d never heard of a male siren before, but if this was the first one, she wouldn’t be surprised. It seemed as if he enchanted his crew to sing with him. “You’ve been trying to take my life this whole time!”
How did he know? How could he resist the spell? Who the hell was this man?
“I know underwater, there’s packs of you hiding.” He cackled. “Yeah, I know exactly what you are; a siren.”
She couldn’t even respond. She was too astonished.
“My real wife knows I’m not scared of the water. And my real wife knows I don’t have a daughter!”
The last part he borderline yelled—the siren had messed up so badly.
“But while you were so focused on turning my men into snacks,” he said, doing a satisfied pause. The siren was too startled to think of cutting through the net with her sharp claws. “You didn’t notice that your friends got snatched.”
No. Not her fellow sirens. Not them. Another net came into her view, as she swinged through the air, clinging to the holes that gave her a glimpse of her lost freedom. “What?”
The captain didn’t answer, but the crew did. All of them—the man that was holding the plank to her entrapment, the men with the rows, the men standing behind him, even the ones managing his trapped friends, all sang in a perfect choir. “We are a different beast now, we are the ones who feast now, no more of us deceased, ‘cause we won’t take more suffering from you. We are the man-made monsters, we are the ones who conquer, you are a threat no longer, we won’t take more suffering from you.”
Her own lyrics were used against her—that was vile. The rhyme was complex, the deep anger and sorrow into the song was too much. The siren shook inside the net—anyone capable of directing such a choir couldn’t be a regular sailor. He either had a god behind him or he was one himself. She’d made a terrible mistake.
The captain took it upon himself to sing the second verse. He knew she didn’t have an escape, and gave up all the information he’d been keeping from her. “We’ve been away from home for–about twelve years, or so. First we slayed in our own war, and now we’re here with more foes,” he sang, as she was a victim to her own suffering. Panic was just starting to set in. “While on the run from Poseidon, we found a ship with no crew! I realized nearby there were sirens, singing sailors to their doom.”
Oh, no. Oh, no, no, no. The last ship hadn’t sunk. It had warned the captain—her blood froze in her veins, realizing the wit she had been unknowingly facing this whole time. Men were usually simple creatures. They wanted a woman’s touch, a smile, affirmation, and forgot everything as soon as the song started. But he wasn’t just a man like all the others.
“We filled our ears with beeswax,” he sang, in a higher key, making her decide that he was some kind of male siren. She almost fell under a spell herself—to get lost in his voice, end her own suffering as the captain sang what was inside his mind. “That’s how we resist your song! You pretended to be my wife, so I just played along. I read your lips and phrases, scanning for information; sirens know about every route and horizon, now I know how to get back to my island.”
They’d been unknowingly doing the same. Reading the other, not quite speaking the same tongue—she realized, too late, that as he couldn’t fully hear her, she couldn’t fully decipher what he was yearning for, from there the mistake with the gender of his child. Oh, she was doomed. The chorus started again.
“We are a different beast now, we are the ones who feast now, no more of us deceased cause we won’t take more suffering from you; we are the man-made monster, we are the ones who conquer, you are a threat no longer, we won’t take more suffering from you.”
The message was clear; the chorus was theirs. Their lives were in their hands. However, sirens did what they were used to the most. They sang.
“Spare us,” they harmonized, from the net where their bodies were squished against each others’. “Oh, spare us, please,” they tried to complete a bridge, incapable of doing it when the captain interrupted.
“Why, so you can kill the next group of sailors on this part of the sea? No, you wouldn’t have spared me—I made a mistake like this, it almost cost my life; I can’t take more risks of not seeing my wife! Cut off their tails, we’re ending this now; throw their bodies back in the water—let them drown.”
The bridge was his. Their lives were his. The siren fell on the cover of the ship, as a pair of hands held her down while a blade ran across the lower half of her body, cutting off her feathered fish tail—pain wasn’t a strong enough word to describe the burning of the metal piercing through her skin. It was agony. She screamed, a high pitched no , almost comically synchronized with her sisters’ screams. There was blood everywhere, men holding down her friends as they choked on the cover of the ship. The captain’s face didn’t even flinch, even as she made sure that her tear-filled eyes never moved from his. She wanted him to feel her pain. She wanted him to bear the weight of her life and her sisters’ on his shoulder for the rest of his life, but something told her that hers would be the first life he wouldn’t regret to take.
The chorus was even more cold blooded this time. Three choruses, she realized. They had three, and she only had two. The siren felt so small as her sight got blurry, her hands slipping on her own blood, not feeling anything from waist down.
“He is a different beast now, he is the one who feasts now, no more of us deceased, cause he won’t take more suffering from you; he is the man-made monster, he is the one who conquers, you are a threat no longer, he won’t take more suffering from you.”
Someone grabbed her, and next she knew, she was flying. It reminded her of when she used to help Demeter look for her daughter. It didn’t last for long; she hit the water, and used her arms to try and swim, but she was losing strength every second. Water was getting in her mouth. But the captain kept on singing, his voice had two choirs behind; the crew, and the sounds of the splashes and screams of her sisters.
“Kill them all,” she heard, and then everything went black.