#Ed is in the Disney version of this story and Izzy is in the Andersen version

[little-bloodied-angel]

@carrymelikeimcute This possessed me when I saw the post so here, have

"The sea witch is beautiful, and Israel wasn't expecting that.

Beautiful in an unnerving way, even if he looks mostly like a young man; from the fluidity of his movements to the growths on his body -not barnacles and limpets and other rot like he's seen before on corpses fallen to the depths, but flat slivers of gold blending with soft pale skin in random spots, a band of it winding around his neck catching his attention in particular; pearls of different shapes and sizes and colors edging the contours of his orbital arches, his clavicle, his cheekbones, his shoulders. Long-ago-crushed gems in an iridescent rainbow melded with his eyelids, sanded-smooth coral and diamonds hanging like small drops from his peculiarly long eyelashes. His unnaturally red lips, the color vibrant even in the gloom of the cave; his canny eyes, the swirl of moving colors there, shifting through and from violet to gold to pure green to silver to teal to blue. He's got holes punched through his earlobes, a collection of human earrings dangling there, another rainbow of gems studded into the slightly pointed cartilage of his ears, a teardrop emerald with a chain threaded through his bellybutton. The smattering of freckles across his nose is gold foil, too; he's got dark hair, but when the light hits the hole at the top of the cave, the reflections that come back are copper, red, auburn, gold, even blue; and the soft waves of it look inviting, like those plump red lips do.

Israel has lived in the ocean his whole life; he knows what bright colors tend to mean, and he stays away.

He's not here for the witch. He's here because the witch can help him.

"You sold a pair of human legs to one of the Princes" he says, and it's not a question. The witch widens his eyes and presses a hand to his chest, over the floaty silvery-white silk gauze that moves with him and barely covers anything, making his stacked bracelets clink as he does so, as though he's offended, but his grin gives him away.

"It was much more than a pair of legs" he says, in a drawl like the currents, showing off too-sharp, too-white teeth. "Without human lungs and everything else that goes with, they wouldn't have done him much good, would they?"

He moves towards Israel; his serpent's tail is a dizzying blend of iridescent shades from red to lilac to teal to black, studded in more pearls, some of them as big as half the size of Israel's closed fist. And he moves quick, smooth and sure; he's in front of Israel's face in an eyeblink.

"I want that, too" he says, and his voice does not waver, not even at the spark of red he sees in the witch's eyes.

"You do? Since when have you ever cared that much about the human world or what it has to offer?" he asks, head cocked, grinning coyly. "It's a lot of risk, and very low reward".

Israel's hand flies to the tattoo on his cheek before he thinks of it, as though shielding it from the scrutiny of those eyes, and he knows a second too late that he's given himself away.

"Ah" is all the witch says, an exhale really, and his long fingers reach out to touch but stop short, curling inside his palm one by one. Israel closes his eyes, and feels the water move as the witch swims back to his cauldron.

"Well, when there's a will, there's a way" he says cheerfully, arranging his arms over the edge so he can rest his cheek on one of them. Israel tries to keep his eyes on the collection of bracelets; one is a carved circlet made of jade, with a serpent winding around it; another is silver, decorated with deep blue and green enamel in winding patterns; a third is made of amber and coral twined together, and a fourth of black lacquer and shells of abalone; yet a fifth is a cuff edged in clinking coins, decorated with lapis-lazuli and malachite and agate and letters he cannot recognize. There are more, but the witch snaps his fingers and silently demands to be looked in the face by pointing at it.

"Magic is never free, though. You know that. Your prince paid a hefty price to chase his golden haired dream, and so will you".

"What did you make Edward give you?" he growls, forgetting for an instant how dangerous of a being this is to anger.

"Tut, tut" the witch chastises, clicking his tongue and wagging his pointer finger. For one horrifying moment, Israel thinks that the flesh has been stripped from it raw, before he realizes it was cut off cleanly at the first joint and replaced with an articulate prosthetic that looks to be ivory or porcelain, painted all over with surface-world flowers. He recognizes the spider lilies; Edward showed them to him years and years ago. It looks like at some point, the witch paid a price too. "I didn't make him give me anything. The enchantment asks, and I translate".

Israel has barely opened his mouth before the witch speaks again.

"His spell was his spell. Not him nor I can tell you. But I can tell you this. Regardless of everything else -regardless of the price- the spell you need will demand pain of you. You will drink the potion and become human, yes, but..."

The multicolored liquid swirls in the cauldron and reflects in those eyes. If Israel didn't know better, he'd think the witch is worried, or upset.

He blinks and starts moving his hands over the cauldron, summoning faster swirls and curling smoke in bizarre colors, every once in a while adding an ingredient as he talks that Israel cannot distinguish, making the potion flare bright and loud.

"It will feel like this: a sword will slice your tail in half, and that pain will remain in your legs; red-hot iron will close your gills, a blade will hollow out your chest for your lungs, and with every step you take you will feel a million shards of glass digging into your feet. Every breath and every step will be pain, and there will be no end for it except to gain the heart you seek. And if you don't achieve that by the time the seventh sun three times has set, you will relinquish your own heart" the witch says, looking into the cauldron and not at him until he raises his face, set in harsh lines that seem at odds with his beauty, like broken coral gone sharp and jagged. "Is that something you're willing to agree to?"

Israel feels his own face set too. He's not like the human prince Edward is fascinated with; not pretty and shiny and golden and warm. He is old and weathered, and cold like the deep sea, that he knows; but he also knows the loyalty and devotion of his own heart, the lengths he will go to protect Edward, to love him.

"It is" he says, and his voice doesn't tremble.

"Very well then" the witch says back, and his own voice has become something odd and layered and metallic, as he swims up to the glass bubbles in the upper shelves and starts collecting what they house.

"Red lilies for passion; purple hydrangeas for a will of understanding; poppies for love and death; myosotis as a plea not to be forgotten" he recites, as a shower of petals rains into the pearlescent liquid, pale purple and sky blue and blood red.

"Pomegranate and silk chrysalis for transformation" he goes on; the strange human fruit bleeds under his glinting knife and glinting eyes, and the little balls of thread dissolve.

"And now for sacrifice" says the witch, and once more in an instant he's in front of Israel. One of his earrings, he notices, is not like the others, not a pearl on a hook or a curved horn carved in coral or even a human gold coin. It's a silver dagger, going through a heart carved in a ruby. Israel's own heart aches; Edward had worn a similar one, a gift, not long ago. Another one, he realizes, the oldest-looking one, is a fishing hook made of ivory or bone. He shudders.

"Your enchantment requires three things of you. Something from the past you cherish; something from the present that has been discarded; and the promise of a future sacrifice, sealed with a gift".

There's sorrow in those eyes, Israel is almost certain. Still, he once again looks away, once again says: "Take them".

The witch's hand finds the back of his neck, cradles it, and for one bizarre instant Israel thinks he's going to kiss him, and for one even more bizarre heartbeat he wants him to.

"Something from the past you cherish" the witch says, almost against his lips.

Then those long fingers tear at the chain that holds his ring, snapping it, and the witch's other hand twirls the knife until it's scored a circle around his ring finger, guiding it to bleed over the cauldron where his mother's ring also goes. Israel hasn't noticed their bodies moving, and he almost wants to scream, to cry, but the witch never stops.

"Something from the present that has been discarded" he pronounces, and the hand cradling his head turns into a grip as the witch's knife finds his neck this time, sinking deep and cutting a vertical line down the front of it. The grip disappears, and the witch withdraws a mass of bloodied, stringy red rope from his throat with that hand. He suddenly realizes what it is, as it's thrown into the cauldron too.

His vocal cords. His voice. Discarded, but not by him. A warning of a doomed endeavor, but now he can no more stop this than he can scream his pain.

"And a promise of a future sacrifice, sealed with a gift" the witch finishes, turning the dagger over the light until it glows red and plunging it into Israel's chest, into his heart, now scarred with the price he will pay in three times seven suns.

The reddened dagger stirs the liquid in the cauldron in one direction, and then the witch does the same with the hand that wears the prosthetic, going in the opposite one, the potion glowing enough as to blind as he mutters under his breath.

The potion settles, dark as night with odd twinkles of red, and the witch fills a glass bottle with it that he hands to him, holding his hand in- in his.

Why can't he think of his own name?

"Listen to me carefully, or this will be your death. Swim up to shore before you drink this, or you will drown. Don't kill the man he wants, or his heart will turn to stone. And your name is the gift the spell took; there's power in names. The past person you cherished gave you Israel; the person who discarded your voice gave you Izzy. Unless you win his heart, and reclaim the price you paid, or forfeit yours in turn, you will be neither. But I will give you one gift, so you will not fall into despair. You're far too interesting to just let die in a day" he tells him, too fond for his cruelty. "Your name during this trial, your name that comes from me, is Basilica". The witch presses cold lips to his forehead for an instant, before urging him: "Now go".

Basilica swims out of the cave and up to the surface as fast as he can, tears welling in his eyes. Not one sun has set yet, and he already feels like he's lost everything.

When he breaches the water and heaves himself onto golden sand, he unstoppers the bottle and downs it in one gulp. The sensation is as promised, as described, and the pain twice as brutal, and his heart pounds and his chest heaves as he undergoes an agony he can no longer give voice to, until his heart and his new body give up on him and he collapses.

~~~~~~

Deep, deep down under the sea, in his cave full of trinkets and ingredients, the sea witch watches him through a gently held glass bubble, and his heart aches, as he toys with the silver and emerald ring, clean and bright as new, that he'd retrieved from the bottom of a momentarily empty cauldron. He has always had his reasons for disliking most of the sea princes, and Edward in particular, but this is a step too far.

"I wasn't lying when I said you're too interesting to let die" he murmurs, and his power echoed in the walls agrees with him. "But you're also too cherished, and you don't even know". He sighs, then slides the ring onto a velvet cord ripped from his clothes, then over his head and under the band of gold melded around his neck. "I'm starting to think" he says to no one in particular, swimming upwards again in search of a bubble that houses spider lilies "that it's past my due for a little trip to the human world".

A little mermaid AU where Ed gets legs to go after Stede, but then Izzy rocks up to sea-witch Lucius and ALSO wants legs so he can go after Ed. And Lucius (who is a messy bitch who loves ocean drama and is like 'why is there a fucking run on legs all of a sudden??') agrees, but the price is that, if Ed 'doesn't want Izzy's heart' then he must return to the sea and pledge it to him instead.

Cue Lucius also taking human form to stir shit and talk about how crappy humans are with Izzy, who inevitably fails to get Ed's love for himself.

And Izzy thinks he's going to literally get his heart ripped out or be forced to work for a witch and not just...you know...be gently cherished by a lonely sea-witch who thinks this royal guard is...pretty neat actually.

(Also, tentacle sex).