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eetherealgoddess · 10 months ago

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ꨄBeneath The Watersꨄ

Oneshot - Yandere Mermen/Soulmate Au

❦Y/n, a new marine biologist, was working along with her older brother and coworkers on a trawler. They come across the most ethereal yet dangerous sea creatures. Survival rate? Guess who the one percent is❦

Sano Manjiro, Hanemiya Kazutora, Sanzu Haruchiyo, & Haitani Brothers x Reader

Not fully proofread

MY TR FANDOM WORKS ARE ONLY ON TUMBLR, AO3, AND WATTPAD UNDER EETHEREALGODDESS! REPORT IF YOU SEE IT POSTED UNDER ANYONE ELSE BUT ME!!!

Mermaid language is blue

I apologize if I get any Japanese etiquette or culture wrong, I literally have to research the culture for some of my fandom stories so if anything is wrong, please excuse my ignorance.

The guys are mermen princes and they’re all brothers. Their dad is the king so because of their royal blood, they have the gift of singing which puts their victims in a trance, and can form legs. They can also change any human they want into mermaids. They can understand human language but have a harder time speaking it. ‘Human’ language is all languages btw I’m just doing english bc that’s the only language I know.

Notice:

✩Y/n is 18+. I picture her as a black female but you can see her however.

✩Some parts of the story may not be realistic or factual. After all, this is a work of fiction.

✩Although it's a dark 'romance,' I do not condone any of the behavior displayed.

✩Dark content such as: gore, violence, triggering topics, graphic scenes, vulgar language, explicit sexual content, etc.

✩There will be scenes that involve non con and/ or dubcon so don’t read if that makes you uncomfortable

✩That being said, this story is for 18+ only.

Enjoy!

Beneath the Waters

“Did you receive the latest sample for the lab, Y/n?” Darius, her older brother asks as he stands beside her resting form on the trawler. The waves of the ocean rocking the ride slightly as the current carries them on.

“Yes, for the fiftieth time.” She sighs, sitting up from her leaned position against the side of the boat. She pulls her sunglasses off as she places them inside of her backpack. He nods in response as he chuckles.

“Sorry, I just want to make sure you have everything.” He scratches the back of his head with a sheepish smile. She smirks light heartedly as she shifts her arms to rest against her knees which are bent as the platform of her shoes are plastered against the floor.

“There’s nothing to be worried about. I got this! Yeah, I’m new to this thing but you know more than anyone else that I’m a fast learner when I put my mind to something.” She states, waving her hands as she gives him a comforting smile.

He sighs as he looks across the water, “Yeah, yeah I know.” He places his hands in his pockets. “I’m proud of you, Y/n. You’ve come far in this industry.”

“Don’t get all sappy on me now, dude.” She laughs, standing from her spot after their coworkers are heard yelling. She eyes her brother with a raised brow, him mimicking the same expression out of confusion.

The trawler rocks as they walk toward the gathering of individuals, four of them bent as they seem to be pulling a net from the outer side of the boat. Everyone else stands around them. When she gets closer, her eyes widen as she notices a large pink tail flapping around the net violently.

One of the men seems to be holding it down as the woman beside him moves her arms around as if she’s wrapping something quickly. Y/n and Darius walk beside one of the designated divers.

“Check this baby out!” She exclaims, standing from her position as she moves out of the way. Y/n’s eyes widen at the sight of an ethereal looking man. Despite his narrowed icy blue eyes glaring at the employees, nobody could deny the intense beauty of the man’s face. His blonde eyelashes cause his irises to pop as his long platinum hair lays out gorgeously under him, some falling over his shoulders.

Once his wrists are tied, they pull him over the boat, still wrapped in the net as he struggles against his restraints. His long nails, sharp as he accidentally cuts his own skin. Y/n could only look as she felt guilt suddenly overtake her mind. After they bound his tail, holding it down, Y/n had enough.

“I think we should let i-, him go, guys.” Everyone, except the mermaid turns to look at her as if she just grew two heads. Her hands place themselves on her hips as she eyes them back.

“Y/n, you’re new so I’m just going to let this slide. You see, this is a one chance in a lifetime kind of deal, you get it? We’d be the second in years to have not only discovered, but captured a real life mermaid. There’s no way we’re letting him go.”

“But why can’t we just study them down in the ocean as we swim? I know that some can be dangerous but not all of them are.” She suggests.

“Because they are dangerous creatures as a whole. They don’t just think like a fish they can act and think like a human which is bad for us. Not to mention, we’re their choice of food besides other species of fish.”

“I get that but we have gear for that, don’t we?”

“Y/n, stop! Okay? It’s fine, they can breathe for at least twenty four hours outside of water and we’ll put it in a secure tank. If you’re worried about its well-being, it will be fine.” Darius explains, trying to keep her from getting fired.

The blonde merman’s eyes shift back and forth between the two humans conversing, particularly observing the woman who is speaking for the merman. Under the cloth, he licks his lips as he smells the divine scent spewing from the female, closing his eyes as he inhales. The smell brings his tense body to a tingling, relaxed sensation, a deep purr emitting from his body as his eyes shut.

“Fine, alright! I’m sorry. I’ll leave it alone.” She sighs, crossing her arms as she turns away, refusing to look at the creature with pity.

“Alright, everyone! Let’s get this show rolling!”One guy says as they walk over to the netted merman. Before any could move any further, a high pitched whistle sounded in the air, causing everyone to pause. Y/n’s eyes widen in concern as some of the coworkers stop their movements. Everyone stares across the ocean, over the being that’s lying down.

“Shit! Everyone, grab the ear plugs!” Someone yells out.

Y/n immediately turns her body as she runs to her bag. Roughly grabbing the ear plugs as she shoves them into her ears as the sound of a melody occurs. She sighs in relief as she stands from her crouched position, sound muffled as she turns around. Her breath hitches as she watches everyone slowly walk towards the edge of the trawler as they look to be in a trance.

“No!” She yells as she runs to Darius, roughly gripping his arms as she pulls him in a hug, his heavy body walking ahead as if she weighs nothing.

“No! Please, Darius! Wake up!” She smacks his face multiple times as he continues his stroll.

A muffled tune could be heard once more through her ear plugs as she eyes the ocean, four heads peeking from below as only their eyes are shown glaring at the crowd coming toward them.

“Fuck! Darius, wake up! Please!” She runs quickly to grab a random pair of ear plugs dropped from the others. She runs back to him, shoving them into his ears. Unfortunately, the melody is already pulling him in.

She runs to the edge as she blocks him from moving further, though he tries. She turns her body slightly to face the other sea creatures as all the other people climb over the trawler and hop into the water as they swim toward the predators.

“You already have enough, don’t take him goddamnit!” She shrieks. Her nails scrape against the paint as she holds on to the edge as he attempts to push her to the side.

The blonde watches the display as he observes her distressed state. He shakes the feeling of wanting to nurture her, guiding her into letting go of that useless human considering his restraints and her species. The scent gets the best of him as his tail tingles, moaning softly as his eyes roll into the back of his head, the fumes becoming overwhelming as a cold heat fills his body.

The four glare curiously as they ignore their incoming meal to watch the girl struggle. The one with black hair and blonde streaks tilts his head as he watches her actions. He disappears under the water as his yellow tail splashes the water. The other three ethereal beings use their nails and sharp teeth to shred the flesh of their victims.

“Darius, please wake up.” She cries, tears finally falling as he continues to struggle in her hold. The yellow tailed male peaks above the water closest to the trawler as he eyes Y/n.

She makes eye contact with his brown irises. He emerges from the water slightly.

“L-…let go. Too l-late.“ His soft voice struggles to speak English as the human language differs from the sea.

She gasps as she fully turns her body to face the male.

“No! I can-!” Darius shoves her to the side, almost knocking her over as he dives into the water.

“DARIUS!” She releases a blood curdling scream as she runs for him, only to be forced back by the merman jumping from the water and pushing her on her back as he falls on top of her. His tail fits in between her legs as his claws hold on to her wrists. She struggles under him as he uses his heavy body weight to hold her down. Goosebumps form on her body as the water drips onto her from all over, including his hair that drapes over both of them. The symbols embedded into his skin, black and prominent as she analyzes her situation.

“Get off of me! I need to save him!” She yells. He shakes his head as he inhales her scent, his grip tightening when the addictive fumes reach deep into his nostrils. Her eyes widen when his head drops to her shoulder, smearing the water against her neck. Rustling causes both to turn their heads toward the merman who they originally came to the trawler for. The man on top of her points to his restrained sibling.

She ignores him, peaking over his shoulder as the sound of screams and shredding could be heard, muffled through her ear plugs. She grits her teeth as all she could see was red covering the area, splashes here and there but no sign of any humanity. No sign of her brother.

She releases a strangled cry as the emotional pain takes its toll, realization creeping in as she finds it hard to accept her brother’s demise. Her head drops to the floor as her eyes shut tight, tears and snot mixing together as she weeps. The man on top stares in awe as the moisture falls from her eyes, gaining the knowledge of a human being able to express such heart wrenching emotions for another. He uses one hand to hold both wrists as he uses the other to trace the streak of tears. He eases his face lower as she sobs, slowly leaning in to lick the tears before a hiss sounds from the side, reminding him of why he’s here.

He pulls back, using his hand to gently smack her cheek to gain her attention, succeeding as she opens her lids.

“R-release?” He demands, though it comes out more softly as he knows she’s in a vulnerable state.

“Fine.” She whispers, voice hoarse as she sits up from her position. He shifts his body to allow her to stand up. The pink tailed man stares at her as she walks toward him. He observes her intently as she releases his restraints, including the cloth around his mouth causing her eyes to slightly widen as she notices the scars shaping his lips. She also notices the blood staining his wrists from when he cut himself. He sits up as they face each other. She yelps as she grabs his wrist by reflex when his hand wraps around her throat and pulls her in.

He inhales her scent deeply as he breathes heavily, revealing his sharp teeth as blood rushes to his face. She watches with concern, kneeling as he pulls her once more. His nose reaches the side of her neck as he takes in more air. It’s only in this instance that the feeling of danger comes back, as she is now alone on this boat with these man-eating creatures.

She removes his hand gently as he allows her to before standing back.

“I have to leave so everyone just needs to get off this boat so I can.” She sniffs, wiping her eyes as well as her nose. She hears a muffled shriek as she turns to the end of the boat where the other three mermen float. Her body tenses as she sees faint blood dripping from the corner of the black haired one’s mouth, his dark eyes boring into hers. Seemingly, at the same time the three men inhaled the air before the blonde and black haired man on the left opened his mouth, indicating his singing as she could hear a muffled hum through her ear plugs.

“No, you can’t eat me.” She growls, pointing to her ears as her eyes narrow. “Haven’t you had enough anyway?”

She eyes the faint colors of their tails, two of them being a matching purple while the middle blends in with the darkness of the ocean, a little darker indicating that it’s black. She turns on her heel as she begins to walk to the wheel, luckily having the knowledge of driving this kind of boat. After hearing the water swish, she hears footsteps behind her, she turns quickly, hoping it to be another human. Her breath hitches as her eyebrows raise when she sees the men climbing on the boat with their newfound scaly legs, a pale hue that matches with their individual tail colors, though shimmering as they walk. Her eyebrows furrow at the nakedness, quickly looking away as her face warms. To the side, she sees that the yellow and pink tailed men are now standing on their own pair of feet.

How could I forget that the most powerful of mermaids can shift their tails to walk on land? They’re also the same type to even use their voices as a weapon. They even have tattoos that symbolize their royalty! What did we get ourselves into?

She internally gulps as they all stand intimidatingly across from her. She looks around for any weapon near her, unfortunately one not in her eyesight whatsoever.

“Shit.” She whispers. All she could do is stand alert as she watches them, attempting to cover her evident fear as she eyes the murderous creatures standing in front of her.

She eyes them as she notices all inhaling intensely, furrowing her brows when she observes through her peripheral how their bare cocks erect the more they inhale. Besides the very light hue of their normal tail colors covering their erections, it looks human for the most part besides that and their size. Nothing too big but bigger than the average human.

She shrieks as the blonde and blue haired man and his black haired twin run full speed towards her, grabbing her arms before she had time to move. They hold her arms, long nails slightly piercing her skin as they grip her, all forcing themselves on the ground to kneel as they force her to sit on her bottom.

She breathes heavily as she watches the other three get closer. She struggles harder as she yanks her arms. One of the grips actually uses his claw to scratch her skin, splitting it slightly as he leans to her ear.

“Stop it!” The blonde and blue haired man hisses, giving her a painful squeeze as the blood drips down her arm. She yelps as she stops pulling.

“Big brother, what are we going to do with her?” The pink man asks, her eyebrows furrowing at the differing language that consists of croaks and low shrieks.

“Take those things out of her ears.” He answers. The black haired twin listens as he uses one hand to take out both ear plugs and throws them to the side, causing her to gasp.

“Get away from me!” She yells.

The short man walks forward before crouching in front of her, kneeling and crawling half way on to her body. His cold skin drips with water as it falls on her. He inhales her scent once more as his palm holds her cheek. She sits frozen in fear, not anticipating what comes out of his mouth.

“Mate.” He states in her language. Her eyes widen as she pulls back.

“N-no! Humans don’t have mates!” She exclaims.

“Mate.” She hears the others whisper.

“No, absolutely not!” She shakes her head, frowning at the creatures surrounding her.

“Sanzu, Kazutora, secure her legs.” They comply by grabbing her legs and pulling her to lie on her back as the other two secure her arms down.

“What are you doing?” She questions, anxious thoughts forming as the worst case scenarios appear. He climbs higher as his hair drapes over both of their faces. His dark eyes staring at her with intensity and determination.

“Mikey.” He says, wanting to hear his name from her lips. She pauses as she hears his words.

“Mikey, please get off of me! All of you, just go away! I want to go home!” She exclaims in frustration, wanting privacy and peace to mourn before having to contact their facility about the deaths.

“Home?” The older brother on the left asks, his purple eyes observing her as he points over to the ocean. “O-our, no…. y-your home.” He nods.

“No, no, no that is not my home! I am not your mate! I’m not anyone’s mate, I’m human!” She reasons, hoping to get that through their heads. She yells in pain when she feels a harsh scratch on her leg, blood oozing from the wound.

“Y-you are mate!” Sanzu hisses, his nail paused against the end of her wound with his other hand wrapped around her ankle. Kazutora grips her other leg tighter as a frown falls on his face to the rejection, his eyebrows furrowing. The twins glare at her as they also give her a warning squeeze, involving the tip of their nails. She breathes heavily as she tries to ignore the pain.

“N-no, I’m not! I can’t be because I’m -!” She’s cut off by cold lips smashing on hers, Mikey gripping her chin painfully as he roughly combines their lips. His other hand grabs her shoulder as his naked chest is pressed against her clothed breasts. His erection pressed in between her legs.

The two brothers above her bend their bodies to gain better access to her neck as they satisfy their taste buds. Nipping and sucking as they bruise her skin. Sanzu licks the blood of her wound, slowly savoring the taste. Kazutora purrs as he caresses her other leg, removing her shoe and sock, throwing them to the side. Sanzu does the same so he can smell more of her sweet flesh.

“Rin, let’s release the stimulant.” The oldest twin says. He nods his head as they both bare their sharp teeth, piercing her skin as they release the venom. She let out a scream as the pain was sudden and prominent.

“Oh, God!” She exclaims against Mikey’s lips as the feeling becomes unbearable, the throbbing in her neck reaching all over her body.

“Ah.” She breathes out as the feeling turns into an intense sensation, tingling and arousal surrounding her body as her nipples harden and clit gains a heartbeat. Wet slick forms, beginning the breeding process her body has been forced into. Her chest rises and lowers as she breathes deeply, her eyelids heavy as her body yearns to be bred.

“Fuck, n-no! L-let me go.” She whines, sobbing as her reproductive system takes over, her clit pounding as her hips slightly buck against Mikey’s erection. She shivers as they all smile in content, smelling her heat as her pheromones fill their nostrils, turning them on even more.

Rin rips her shirt open, revealing her bra as she yelps. Mikey grabs her hand from the other twin as he wraps his lips around her finger, slowly suckling as he sits himself on top of her torso, using his other hand to trace from her chest to her stomach, lightly scraping his nails against her skin. Both twins rip her bra apart, revealing her diamond hard nipples, her gasping at the cold air hitting her breasts.

She begins to struggle against their holds, only to regret it as Mikey pulls her finger out and chomps on her hand as a warning, drawing blood. She cries out, tears falling as her mind conflicted with the sensations all over her body. He returns to suckling her fingers and tracing her skin, licking the blood up as well. The twins move to grab her breasts as both use their tongues to lick her nubs, Rin roughly pulling and nibbling her as his brother gently sucks and kisses her other. She could only breathe heavily as they continued their assault.

Kazutora and Sanzu tore her pants, spreading her legs as far as they could while gripping her thighs with one hand. Both men position their heads between her legs before using a claw to slice her panties off, leaving her wet and bare for them to see. Her head falls back as her clit throbs, anticipating contact but only bucking her hips against the air.

Kazutora leans in as he gives a slow and light kiss on her clit, her twitching at the contact. She bites her lip to remain in control, not moaning out or begging for more. Sanzu retracts his nails to a normal size, using his finger to scrape her juices and wrap his lips around his own finger, quietly moaning as her taste reaches his tongue. Kazutora takes her whole clit in his mouth, sucking her clit as he bobs his head slowly.

“Oh my god.” She whispers, the sensations becoming overwhelming as she feels Sanzu gathering more slick and entering a finger into her vagina. Mikey takes the opportunity to lick all around her hand and wraps her fingers around his cock. She attempts to pull back but his hold is tighter.

“P-please? N-need it.” He says softly. Although she’s almost blinded by pleasure, she wants to end everything as fast as possible. She begins to move her hand up and down at a steady pace. He moans as he thrusts back into her hand.

“Feels good, Mikey?” He teases.

“Shut up, Ran.” He whispers as his head falls back, thrusting a little harder as his cock pulsates. He grabs her wrist to balance himself. Her head is pulled to the side as the blonde and blue haired man eases the head of his cock to her mouth. She shakes her head and attempts to turn away. He keeps his hold on her head as he grabs her nipple roughly.

“B-bite off.” He growls, threatening her as his cock throbs in her face. He releases her nipple when she nods and opens her mouth. He shoves his erection all the way to the back of her throat. He grunts as he pulls back and enters again. She whimpers around his cock as she feels two fingers hitting her g spot as a tongue flicks her clit. She grinds her hips subconsciously, seeking more as they continue to stimulate her.

Both Rin and Mikey moan as they thrust into her, eyes rolling in the back of their heads as their hair flops against their back. Ran reaches for his own cock as he plays with her nipples.

Suddenly, an idea popping into his head, he restrains his thrusts as he gives her hand to Ran. He positions his cock between her breasts and squeezes them together. Mikey thrusts her chest as he purrs. Ran takes the opportunity to wrap her fingers around his cock, essentially the same idea with Mikey a minute ago.

Kazutora and Sanzu stop their motions, their dicks tense and in need of assistance, dripping as they throb.

“Guys, readjust so I can get behind her.”

They ignore him until he lets out an ear piercing shriek, causing her to groan in pain for her ears. This gets everyone’s attention so he repeats himself. Everyone readjusts so that he she lies on top of him, her ass rubbing against his abdomen.

Mikey stays sitting on top of her in the same position and fits his cock back in between her breasts. Sanzu sits behind Mikey, positioning his cock to her entrance. Rin reconnects his erection with her mouth as well as Ran using her hand.

She cries out when Kazutora and Sanzu shove their cocks inside of her until they reach the end of her walls, deeply stuffing themselves inside of her slowly. Kazutora grips her hips as Sanzu grips her legs. Both men pull back as they slam back in, the slick coming from their cocks moisturizing her up enough to enter, besides her own slick.

She grunts loudly as they fill her up, her body being used every which way as her nipples are pinched occasionally. The men’s beautiful moans echo in the middle of the ocean, enticing her as she feels nothing but intense pleasure. The wet squelching sounds of their cocks connecting with her skin accelerate as they move faster.

Her own walls tighten around Kazutora and Sanzu’s cocks, pulling them in as they push, sinking deeper into her as Sanzu hits her cervix. The feeling of her body bouncing with movement was enough to send her over the edge as her body is very sensitive from the stimulant.

“Mm, s’ fucking good.” Kazutora whispers as he takes her ear into his mouth. His grip tightening, leaving indents in her skin. His thrusts are steady and hard as her asshole grips him.

Mikey breathes hard as slight moans draw from his lips occasionally, almost slamming his cock against her chin as he relentlessly thrusts his hips. Sanzu moans as he leaned over her lower body, thrusting hard as he bites his bottom lip.

“Good fucking girl. So fucking good for me.” Rin’s head falls back as he fucks her mouth. He holds her head in place with both hands as he rises closer and closer. Ran releases breathy moans as his jaw falls slightly open, gripping her wrist tightly as he gets close.

She moans loudly as she releases, the men following behind as Sanzu and Kazutora cum deep inside her, semen falling out of her holes as there was too much to fit all of it. Mikey’s cum reaches her chin and chest as Ran hits the side of her head. Rin cums in her throat, forcing her to stay in the same place.

After taking a moment to breathe, everyone removes themself as she lies there with tears in her eyes, worn out as she breathes heavily.

“We should change her now and then breed her when we’re home.” Ran states, leaning back against his arms as he sits on the ground.

“No, we should mate her and then change her.” Rin argues.

“No, sex now and then we mate her. I want to breed her.” Mikey pouts.

They continue their argument, Kazutora and Sanzu joining in as Y/n watches the brothers argue weakly.

“How about we mate her, breed and then change her.”

“It wouldn’t make sense to breed her up here.”

“Fine, let’s mate, change her and then finish breeding.”

She would’ve used this opportunity to escape if the stimulant hadn’t weakened her body. She can barely shift on her own comfortably. A hand rubs her forehead as it caresses her cheek. Tears fall as she mourns her brother, coworkers, and life before this moment. She couldn’t even fight as she lay in despair, awaiting her fate to live in the ocean and be tied to these creatures forever.

#tokyo rev x reader #yandere #yandere x reader #sanzu haruchiyo #rin haitani #ran haitani #manjiro sano #sano mikey manjiro #kazutora hanemiya #kazutora x reader #sano manjiro x reader #sanzu x reader #rin x reader #ran x reader #mermaid au #reverse harem #tokyo rev smut #tokyo revengers #yandere tokyo revengers

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ikemenomegas · 1 year ago

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Anchor (up to me love)

Eleven days late, but this is my first entry for Mermay (can we call it June-aid then?) Thank you all so much for your patience. This is the longest one-shot I have written to date and while I'm not completely satisfied with it, I'm proud enough of finishing it. Of course the title references the song by Novo Amor

pairing: Mermaid!Uchiha Sasuke x Reader

word count: 10,014

cw: mentions of drowning, description of wounds, an attempt made at transformation body horror, mentions of death of parents but I couldn't kill Sasuke's entire family again... seemed too cruel to put him in a universe where that happens every single time.

Ao3 link for those who prefer reading there

You heard the thrashing sound first, like an animal caught in a trap, and then you heard the voice, which was far more human.

You knew better than to approach a beast, but on the shores of your own kingdom, you couldn’t in good conscience leave someone to fend for themselves. Especially if they were too injured to drag themselves inland.

The shoreline was studded with sharp stones, broken long ago from cliffs that had since retreated from the sea. They concealed the figure until you were nearly upon him. He was partially submerged, but you could smell the blood, see its thick wash in the water. It turned the foam churned up around him a rusty, raspberry tea color. He groaned, pressing a handful of some shredded fiber to the wound on his chest.

You gasped, involuntary, and he turned, whipped around with teeth bared.

That’s how you saw them: the sharp incisors and all the sharp teeth after that. Inhuman, made to tear. You almost couldn’t believe it, even when you looked below the syrupy, red water and saw the tail, the diaphanous fins drawing in close so it was nearly whip-like, flicking a warning.

You froze, spreading your fingers wide on the stone to show that you carried no weapon in your hands.

“Let me help,” you breathed, unsure whether to retreat, but afraid to appear threatening.

The mer flinched back. There was a ruddy tint to his eyes, which was more apparent depending on the subtle angling of his head. He looked scared, pain flashing across his expression when he moved wrong.

“Why?” he hissed back after a tense pause, strained. His voice was faintly accented, but not really different from the tones of the northernmost islands in the archipelago kingdom to which you belonged.

There wasn’t a good reason, except that something magic and nearly relegated to legend was in front of you and you did not want to see it die, not at the hands of hungry predators. If he had been a man you would have helped him to shore, ran for a doctor, but you didn’t think the creature in front of you would tolerate more human hands.

You tore a strip off the long linen wrapping over your arms and body in a kind of tunic. You poured water from a skin on your hip over the makeshift compress and then passed it to the stranger as a gesture of goodwill. Freshwater drew poison from wounds of the sea.

The mer looked blearily at your outstretched hand and took the cloth. He hissed when it pressed against part of the wound but did not let go, pressing harder until the compress was half stained with his blood.

He eyed you warily. He made another pained noise as he pulled the compress from his torn flesh. It made a horrible wet sound as it pealed away. He held it out for you to pour more water upon it. You did and tore another strip from your clothing for another field dressing.

“There is danger in remaining in the open sea while you heal,” you said softly.

He had bound his wound best he could with pieces of your clothing and the bleeding had eased some, although not much.

He narrowed his eyes as though measuring your intention.

“There's a cove, not far from here. I can show you,” you offered

“Where?” he was demanding but you could hear the uncertainty in his voice.

You sidled carefully around him, angling towards the water.

“We have to swim to get there.”

He nodded, tense but for now acquiescing to the logic in your words.

You carefully tied what was left of your clothing so that no trailing ends risked snagging as you swam and waded deeper into the water. It was warm, but you still shivered at the faint chill against your skin and the mer’s proximity as you slipped into the ocean.

You moved slowly, aware of the mermaid's injuries. It was not a long way to go to the hidden entrance to a place you had discovered years before. You hesitated only for a moment, and then dipped underwater. This put you firmly in the mermaid’s natural habitat. It was, in a way, a show of trust. You dived deeper and deeper, ignoring the pressure in your ears and your chest. The sounds of the mermaid swimming behind you were somewhat unnerving. They were the sounds of a creature both larger and stronger than you in the water, and he was following you. You shook the thought away, moving water with your hands to propel yourself down to the underwater tunnel burrowing between stone and coral and two the protected lagoon beyond.

You pulled yourself through carefully, flicking your feet in small precise motions to avoid drifting into the rough, salt pocked stone. The place you were taking the mer was safe precisely because it was a place difficult to reach both by land and by sea. On land, this bit of coast belonged to the royal family alone; by sea, the pathways through these closely sentried rocks twisted and turned, making a treacherous labyrinth below and a shielding wall above.

You took careful stock of your air. Even though you had been underwater for more than a minute already, this blessing of your noble blood would not last forever. You followed the signs placed long ago to guide swimmers who knew where they wanted to go, and within another handful of minutes emerged into the wide clear waters of an ardent bay.

The slow speed of your only human limbs was perhaps a good thing. The mer following you was visibly exhausted even after what should have been a short journey for him. You led him close to the edge of the water where shallow scoops filled with soft sand and colorful corals and waving fronds of seaweed made comfortable little environments. Too deep for a human to rest in, but it seemed perfect for an injured sea creature.

You pulled yourself up onto the smooth stone bordering the little cove.

“I’ll be back,” you promised.

The mer looked up at you, lines of exhaustion on his face. After a moment, you untied a bracelet from your wrist, made from woven threads of golden sea-silk and three beads, green and red and black strung along it. You offered it to the mer.

“I don’t wish for you to feel trapped here. If at any time you wish to leave, find this color in the wall.” You pointed to the red veined stone. You moved your finger to the black stone and then the green. “Follow the tunnel marked in this order. To return, follow the reverse pattern.”

He reached out for the bracelet, plucking it from your palm without touching your skin.

“I'll come back,” you said once again.

The mer just swished his tail and said nothing to your promise.

You slipped back into the castle, feet bare, hair and clothes dripping.

A strong, musical voice called your name. “How many times have I told you not to track water inside,” Mei said, exasperated.

“I’ll clean it up.”

She sighed. “Aren’t there better things to do with your time?”

You looked blankly back at the trail of droplets and footprints, but your mind was already racing ahead to the things you needed, what you could leave at the lagoon in case it was difficult to return or the mer wanted space while he healed, what kind of books could be in the library, what kind of medicines could work on –

Your sister called your name again. “Are you listening?”

You turned her, half startled.

She sighed again and waved you onward. “Go on.”

She gave you a soft look when you all but beamed at her and continued on your way.

The mermaid’s injury was severe. You spent the next few weeks going down to the lagoon as often as you could. You brought amphorae of fresh water, pots of fresh and salt preserved food - as much fish as you could bring until the mermaid expressed his frustration at the lack of variety and you tried bringing him things from the land, which he seemed to enjoy and eat easily enough - bandages and medicines, sea plants that he instructed you to fetch with imperious expectation, and whatever new knowledge you could scrounge up from the palace library. And what you got in turn was a name.

Sasuke.

It was a beautiful name, you thought, sibilant as the shushing sea, with a bite at the end like cold spray thrown up by a crashing wave. The more days you spent with him, the more obvious his beauty became to you. It was not only a physical attraction, although he made you wish that your skills in the visual arts could properly capture him. If you could paint, you thought you could spend years creating echoes of the way his fins rippled as he moved, a language all their own. After that, you could spend years imitating the gleaming flash of his eyes, as multifaceted as any expert cut stone, dark like lacquer or ink, then lit from within like garnets or rubies.

He was prickly as a lionfish and as curious as a kitten. He never seemed overly delighted when you visited, but if you were gone for more than a day or two, he demanded to know where you had been.

“I have duties to attend to in the castle,” you explained one day. You and Sasuke were taking refuge in the shadow of a cliff as you helped smear a strong, green scented paste on new linen strips with which to bind Sasuke’s freshly washed wound. It still bled sluggishly when exposed, deep as it had been, but it did not seem to be infected.

“You’re not stealing all this stuff, are you?”

You snorted an inelegant laugh. “No.”

He let you help him tie the bandages. Sasuke flicked his tail in such precise movements to stay in place. You didn’t know of anyone who had been this close to a mermaid in decades. The dreamy tales told by sailors carried a wishful magic all their own, but were not likely factual unless there was a mermaid or several sitting clear as day on every spit of land and jut of rock from here to the Land of Whirlpools. All the recorded accounts you had found so far were recollections from those who sailed, who watched at the boundaries of day and night, who weren’t sure what they saw.

“The queen of this country-” you tied the last bandage in a knot that could still be released even once the cloth was swollen with water - “she’s my elder sister. It means I got to grow up in the palace, without everyone paying attention to what I was doing.”

Sasuke went very quiet.

“I know a lot of secret ways in and out.” You glanced up to where the curving roofs of the tallest buildings were barely visible from the cliff upon which it was perched. “And I get to learn anything I want.” There were lots of things you could do that Mei couldn’t, or wasn’t allowed. It wasn’t a bad life. You had always known this. It was just a little lonely.

“Do you need anything else?” you asked the mer.

He propped himself up on the rocks. You could count the faint lines of the gills still left uncovered by bandages on his ribs. They sealed themselves when he was above the waterline for any significant amount of time, which was one of the many fascinating things about him. He looked for all intents and purposes to be ignoring you as he basked on the sun, but his head was tilted towards you.

You pulled a book from within your clothes, flipped back a few pages and then settled against a rock to begin reading out loud.

The next day, you spotted the bracelet you had given him fastened around his wrist.

It had been almost a month when you finally asked Sasuke where his injuries came from. There was no pattern to the wound before, the flesh too torn for you to guess at what had caused it. You had also grown to know Sasuke better in the hours and hours you spent at the site of his convalescence. He carried with him a deep vortex of sadness and anger. It went far deeper than the visible wound.

“I don’t want to explain,” he growled as you mixed a different poultice in a silver dipped mortar. Behind that growl was that vortex, its screaming, all consuming noise.

You had never met someone like this, who had that much hurt inside. It was frightening. You had no idea what it would do to him to touch those memories, but something inside of you told you that you had to know. That not to know would be to miss some vital part of who Sasuke was.

Your fingers stilled on the mortar. “You don’t have to.”

Yet he did not leave. You did not begin to mix the medicine again.

As a child, you had been lost once in one of the terrible typhoons that struck the coast of this kingdom. It had come on suddenly, darkening the sky and obscuring both the path ahead and behind. A strange sound had joined in with the howling winds, almost like singing. Without anything else to give you direction, you had followed the sound until you came to the edge of the sea. The storm had churned the water gray and foamy white and cold, forbidding blue so dark it was nearly black. You had tucked yourself into a cluster of stones and brush, your knees pulled up to your chest. The storm had screamed around you, you were soaked through. Who knew how long you had been out there, but it was long enough that you were convinced that all there would ever be was the shrieking sound of the typhoon and the sideways driven rain. The reprieve of the eye had come on with a sudden silence.

You only realized that you were humming through the memory when the odd look Sasuke was giving you cut through your blank recollections. There were half crushed purple flowers and the variegated green mush of herbs under your hands, their scent in the air, salt on your lips, the soft lap of waves interrupted by Sasuke’s agitated movements, his eyes before you, touched red like the day you’d met him.

He moved forward, warrier than he’d been even on the day you found him. Closer.

And then some spell was broken and with a flick of his tail he vanished. The water barely rippled. A set of perfect concentric rings faded from the point he had been hardly a second before. For the first time, it was overtly apparent that Sasuke had all the marks of a deadly predator, of a monster from the deep. It did not scare you as much as it should have.

All of the books in the palace library said that mermaids were magical creatures, that they had an inborn resilience, speed and strength greater than a human, could breath both air and water, and could sing to charm men off the rocks. But despite all of Sasuke’s strength, he had come to you with a terrible wound that pulled skin and muscle as it healed, and went nearly to the bone. Your own little spells helped the healing process along. You believed that it had likely kept him from dying. It didn’t stop the slow, painful experience from taking over three months before the wound was intact enough to be without bandages for long, for Sasuke to swim with only a small wince as he turned.

You were removing the last of the linen wraps when Sasuke spoke in a low voice. “What do you know of my world? The world beneath the surface.”

You sat back, coiling the length of cloth neatly on the pile beside you.

There were very old accounts among all of the old documents you combed through in the dead of night as the sea shushed outside the windows. They spoke with an authority that indicated either brilliant enough imagination to include the utterly mundane aspects of formal proceedings, or a realism only gained by being present to witness the comings and goings of powers that were beyond the Land of Water’s borders.

Since Sasuke’s sudden arrival, you had imagined them often, wondered what role he might play. He had a proud bearing that was familiar from interacting with nobility, a precise grace that made you wonder if fighting was a regular occurrence for him, and a casual entitlement that said he was used to getting what he wanted one way or another. But you had seen these things among common folk as well. There were warriors at court from the inland farms or outlying islands who had fought their way through prejudices and more difficult circumstances who had earned every ounce of their pride and poise.

“If it is even a little like what I have read about, it is as complex or more so than the world above, but all our information is very old.”

You could not quite figure out why it stopped. There was a season of the usual terrible storms, and then slowly, nothing but supposed myths.

“But in my world, I have seen assassinations, and diplomatic disasters, and houses nearly wiped from the map.” The last words nearly broke on your tongue. All of these things had happened to your family, but you and Mei had survived it.

Sasuke carefully rotated his shoulder, looking thoughtful while he prodded at the new skin on the edges of the wound.

“You’ve fought for your life, before,” he said.

“Yes.” It was all you could say. Sasuke wasn’t asking. You didn’t know how he knew. Even Mei kept the details of your survival quiet. Not exactly secret, but the information was no longer shared frequently and few people would even think to ask. The Queen was the center of your scattered island nation. But your sister was the most important person in your life, the only family you had left. You would do anything for her, even though she could not do everything she might want to for you.

“Tell me,” he demanded.

You told him the memories that had sprang to mind and others – of those terrifying nights with the handle of a knife clutched in your fist, picking out paths by starlight, first with your father, and then with guards, and then alone until Mei, barely sixteen herself, had found you.

Sasuke drifted out of arm’s reach as you told the story that you had never told anyone. There had never been any need. The only one who knew almost every detail had lived through it with you, and neither of you spoke of it, even when the burden of ruling weighed heavily on her shoulders. You would sit side by side with a pot of tea cooling between you, and the question What would our parents do? hovered between you, unspoken.

He watched you narrowly, like some kind of magistrate, weighing every word. If you were younger, it would have filled your blood with ice cold fury. Who was anyone else to judge the impact of your experience?

Now, the words poured from your like water from a spring. You weren’t sure why, except that you knew that in order to know someone, sometimes you had to be known. And Sasuke would not stay in this tiny lagoon forever. He was restless in his healing. You already suspected that he was roaming beyond the bounds of the lagoon, following the secret pathways and tunnels carved through the rocks and going invisibly along the coast where you had found him.

Mei’s rise to her position had not been a triumphant, immediate affair. As little as three years ago, there had been assassins in your room, then blood on your hands, dripping to your wrists. You had left a trail of lopsided, tacky footprints as you had run, silent and with a denying scream in your chest, disguised as a low and continuous, thundering growl, to Mei’s wing, only to find her in a similar state, hair disarrayed, wearing only the web-worked armor she almost never took off and her most trusted student, Chojuro, with a freshly headless corpse at his feet.

Sasuke’s delicately webbed hands periodically flexed closed, betraying his feelings. The bony ridges on the knuckles stuck out only barely, and his quick growing claws were tucked away, but it made the protective feature on his hands more noticeable. Maybe because even with the translucent membrane halfway up his fingers, his hands were no less dextrous than yours. It was easy to forget the ways in which he was built to defend himself.

So, it was no short, victorious tale. This was not the version sung by performers across the archipelago, of the powerful queen in her castle by the sea who weeded out the violence sowed by the fallen kings of the last two generations, who raised islands from the ocean itself.

You left this part out, but there are never any songs about you. You are always and only the last princeps iuventutis, by the side of the queen. You were content enough, being a player at her side, but it had made you realize more than once that no one realized that you had also lived through what it had taken to restore Mei to the throne.

The shadows had shortened significantly by the time you finally trailed into silence. Sasuke seemed… it was difficult to tell through the haze of your own emotions. You felt dizzy from the telling, stunned.

When Sasuke began speaking, it was as though every word was torn from him, his discomfort palpable. You wondered if his story was also unused to being told.

He told you a story that ended roughly where yours had began, and it made you wince at the way it was like your first taste of loneliness, but echoed and repeated until it was magnified. Humans did not form pods, but they were similar to families, although apparently more central to survival below the waves. They were often related units, but they hunted together, fought together, played together. They were units of power in the few great cities jutting out from the unseen crust of the earth or drifting along among the currents.

Some of them were bound by more, by a strength of affection you might have had a hard time understanding if you did not have Mei and only Mei, and understand what it meant to lose everyone else, to lose all bonds of loyalty and love and never feel safe to make new ones. Mei despaired over your alone-ness. She had Chojuro and old Ao and Kirimi. You haven’t been able to find anyone like that.

Sasuke painted broad strokes first, and then filled in the details, as though he was distracted by the details of his own memories. He talked about the billowing clouds of crimson, like a bloody dawn, in the twisting corals when he returned from his evening studies - he would have been some underwater equivalent of a scholar warrior, his own brother’s confidant and blade, had slaughter not come to his city-kingdom.

The attackers, whoever they were, had set both city and survivors adrift. His brother refused to tell him who the culprits were. He refused to show Sasuke how to return home, driving him back to the open waters in the name of safety each time he came close. And he has come so close.

The part of you that knew intimately how even coming home is never coming home after something like the razing of a city, the killing of all the little things that made a family, understood even though your heart hurt for him. Sasuke had a sharp tongue, thorns, but like those plants with thorns, his barbs guarded something delicate and precious. He had a heart that loved so fiercely and truly that you yourself wanted to receive even a little of that emotion, as though it might spark back to life the cold ash of your own heart.

Sasuke’s brother would not let Sasuke use the skill he developed for tracking to take back that home that was first taken from him. So, he has done the one thing Itachi was not there to stop him from doing, which was to find an answer to the other half of the equation. What had attacked the drifting City of Leaves.

That was where the wounds came from.

The city of Sasuke’s birth followed new currents now, settled into a new and still unpredictable course. Forbidden from it and not knowing who still lived within, Sasuke hunted alone.

He tried to hide it with pride, but you saw that hollowness in him. Even though you understood his brother’s desire to preserve Sasuke’s childhood recollections, to keep him away from the dangers of what you guessed was the ongoing conflict within that hidden city-kingdom, it seemed cruel to condemn him to years of not knowing, of trying to deny him vengeance.

And so he was here.

Victorious, which made you somehow proud of him, but also hurt, which made you hurt for him in a way that was unfamiliar. Sasuke had defeated a mer that could cause water to boil, enabling him to do things like create mud that burned, as well as acid, and made interacting with him a deadly endeavor. It was a testament to his skill that he had survived as far as he had already.

It was not Sasuke’s absent brother’s fault that he could not be in two places at once. So perhaps…

The answer came to you with sudden clarity, over Sasuke’s drifting silence. His gaze had wandered away from you, and now he looked down at the ripples of water as the tiny waves in the hidden cove broke themselves upon him.

“Be with me.”

He looked up at you, sharp and quick and a certain shiver went through him that was utterly inhuman.

A slightly abashed heat rushed through your body at your own sudden boldness. You couldn’t take it back though. You had never been more certain of anything in your life.

Sasuke answered with a sardonic smile. It made you wonder who – if – there were others who had offered themselves as companions. He had a beautiful face by human standards. You didn’t know if it was the same among the mer, but you imagined that his skill and the sheer strength of his will would be valued anywhere. He smiled with sharp teeth and when it felt as though some silent laughter at your expense was finished, he had found the words to cut through whatever small fantasy you had been concocting.

“Will you offer me a life on land where each step is like knives? Where I will never meet one of my own kind again?”

You winced back because you had seen these old stories too. They were not what you thought of in that moment, but they were also not not what you thought of. And the way he said it, you knew if he truly believed there was nothing left, he would leave behind the sea no question and walk on knives the rest of his life to be with you. But you would never want him in real pain. It was why you went towards instead of away from him when you first laid eyes on him.

And you would never ask him to trade one loneliness for another.

“Be as you are-” your voice was shaking “-with me.”

It was as though every star you had followed on those moonless nights as a child were aligning, making out a path for you to follow. They led here.

“Why?” Sasuke asked, demanded. His voice was rough. You had surprised him.

Here you knew to tread carefully, but you were dizzy too with the feeling of finding a way out of a place you had never realized that maybe you could leave.

“I told you what made me this way,” you said. Your voice was rough too. The telling had lodged against some old hurt deep in your spirit and that place which you had once thought a well healed scar seemed much closer to the surface than before he had demanded the explanation.

“I want to hear you say it,” Sasuke said. Your skin prickled in sympathetic fear, because no matter how angry he tried to sound, the truth of his emotion was what you heard.

“I don’t feel at home here anymore,” you admitted, terrified.

“You’ve never lived below the water,” Sasuke replied, harsh but in the sort of way that meant it was the only way he knew to keep his voice from breaking.

“You’ve never lived on land,” you countered. “And besides, we have both survived worse. I would find a way.” For you, you did not say.

He gazed at you, frustrated, unsatisfied, and you knew that you had not yet provided an answer.

You swallowed. The strip of linen was wound tight between your hands, striping your fingers with marks, but you hardly noticed. The truth would tear your heart wide open. But maybe that was what was needed. Wound for wound.

“These months I’ve spent with you… when I’m with you, I don’t feel alone.” What was love after all, but knowing that somewhere in the world, you were not alone?

Sasuke’s throat bobbed, the gill slits between his ribs fluttered as he drew in water, faster, like a land dweller breathing hard.

“It would take magic beyond either of us now to transform.”

But he didn’t deny, did not refuse.

“I’ll find a way.” Your gaze burned into his with the force of your vow.

The faint furrow of Sasuke’s brow smoothed out.

“You can try. I’d help but–” he gestured down at himself, at the raw, spidering wound starring from the center of his chest and bursting again at points across his back.

You shook your head. “Don’t go anywhere,” you entreated. “Not yet.”

He nodded easily. He was well on his way to healing but still not as strong as he had been before battling the gold-tailed heat-creating mer.

“What would you do?” you asked after a moment, habitually inquisitive. There were questions a princeps could ask that a queen could not, but you were also just a tiny bit nosy about things you were curious about.

Sasuke smirked a bit, one corner of his mouth turning up. “We go find a witch.” He put a sound behind the word “witch”, the language of his people, and it sent a warning prickle up your spine.

“Oh,” you agreed quietly. “Don’t do that.”

Sasuke snorted in a pale acknowledgement of the humor remaining in the situation and then went quiet.

It took you five feverish weeks. Five weeks of pouring over manuscripts deeper and deeper in the palace archives, of searching for the faintest scrap of a hint of the kind of magic that would let one of your kind stay underwater for a change you knew would be maybe once in a lifetime. A less focussed part of your mind reworked through what you read to see if any of it could bring Sasuke on land with you, without pain, and not forever, but long enough to give him an unexpected advantage over his still numerous and yet unknown enemies. The second thing did not yield anything that you could use.

Not on land at least. There were holes once you dug deep enough, crawled far enough through the records, where maybe this old magic existed somewhere else and a chance at love did not come with so steep a price.

You had five weeks to realize what you would be giving up. Nothing felt like home, but someone did, and you would be leaving her.

The day you finally found the door to your answer, you crawled into Mei’s bed once nightfall came. You had not done this since you were very small, since before the palace walls were stained with ash and blood. Ash and blood – two of the oldest conduits for great magic.

She hummed, stroked a hand down your back. You could feel her palm through the silk of your pajamas.

“You’ve been busy lately.” She was imitating a song your parents used to use to get the two of you to rest, even when so excited you were fairly swimming through your bedding like a pair of fingerlings.

It was only now, after spending so much time with Sasuke, so much time trying to find every fact you could about something that was supposed to be purely mythical, that you suspected it was the same song, almost exactly. That was another of the gifts a remnant of blood-from-the-sea gave its children.

“There is much of the world to know,” you said.

“Yes,” Mei replied, “There is. Our kingdom is such a small part of it.” She said this thoughtfully, as though recalling all the months and years of struggle to get to this place, to a semblance of peace. “– of the earth and the sea.”

Practice and familiarity kept you from stiffening with suspicion and surprise. Mei’s fingers similarly did not pause in their gentle pass up and down your spine.

She must know. She was the queen and she made it her job to know everything so the betrayal that stole your family would never happen again. It would make things easier. Loving your sister did not always make it easy to tell her what was in the halls of your heart.

“What would you do,” you asked her without change in inflection, “to give me a chance at happiness?”

After a pause, she said: “Anything, last blood of mine.” She pressed a kiss to your brow and then blew out the lights with a blink and flick of her fingers. “Almost anything.”

You went down to the lagoon the next day, at dawn. Sasuke was used to impatience, anticipation. He only looked at you curiously, did not ask if you had discovered the magic you would need. You turned a roll in your hands.

There were things that Sasuke had found he very much enjoyed from the world above. Fruits and vegetables were different, brighter. Bread, which he had never really had before. You brought them all often, trying to show him as many wonders from the surface as possible. He had been well enough to hunt on his own for some time now so it was all you brought unless he wanted something from deep waters, too far away to catch and return within a day.

“I think I found it.”

Five weeks has been long enough to realize that there were things you were going to miss about the land too. Besides Mei. You pinched a corner off the roll and let it melt - butter and yeast - on your tongue.

Sasuke stilled. Or the majority of his body did, the rest of him still drifted and moved like seaweed or the wide fans of coral. “You think?”

“It will be difficult.” Of course it would. This was asking much, and there was always a price for magic. “You’re right. We can’t do it.”

The fins of the left side of his tail dragged, listing deeper into the water before he righted them, showing his otherwise silent dismay. It was still fascinating that his body language – which should be alien and strange – has become easier to read, and so quickly.

“But my sister is the queen of this nation. She has enough magic.”

“Would she do it?” For you, for the both of you, would she change you from a creature of the land to the sea?

You didn’t know. She had said “almost anything”. Would she let you go down to the unknown, into the depths of the sea with only a companion and no promises to bring you home?

Sasuke had edged closer, letting the gentle waves push him to the rocky shore where you leaned down. Your fingers dangled in the water.

He called your name. His voice shook.

“Are you going to break your promise?”

It was at that moment that you realized how much your words had meant to Sasuke. You had been thinking of this as a gamble. Sasuke could get tired of you, he could leave you, he could decide that without any titles or family in the ocean, you were worthless to him. You had slowly made peace with all of this.

As his voice broke on the word break, your resolve became honed to a blade.

“No.” You reached for his face. Your hands cupped his cheeks. You pressed your forehead to his.

“Even my brother–” he choked, on the grief, on the anger, on the long years of being left alone of being told no, Sasuke. I need to do this alone.

Something small, lighter than a pebble but heavier than a drop of water rolled over your fingers and knuckles.

The realization that, yet again, he didn’t have to be alone for most of his life had broken something open inside of him at the threat of abandonment. Again. Sasuke clutched your wrists, not to pull away, but to keep you close. His claws faintly indented against your skin.

You nuzzled against him, closer than you had ever been. He smelled of salt and the sea, and something almost electric, like the air under a thunderstorm.

His tears slowed but did not stop.

You hadn’t found the entirety of the spell, but you knew how to hunt it down, to solve the puzzle of hints and documents until you had the whole picture. One piece of information from the multitudes you had consumed came to you:

The tears of a mer are pearls, used in the magic of transformation, from land to sea.

You cupped his cheek, and caught the fall of his sorrows. You understood what it was to have an elder sibling who could not love you more than her duty but who would try to give you everything regardless, and for it still not to be enough. You knew what it was to be profoundly lonely, to have lost everything and still have that place like a hole through your lungs.

“Wait for me,” you begged. “Wait here and when I have convinced her highness the queen, when I have convinced my sister, I will come to you. And if I cannot, I will go with you anyways and find a way out to sea. As a pirate or a humble sailor, I will find you. For your love I would drown.”

“I do not want you to drown,” Sasuke said, dark eyes fierce and wild and afraid, shimmering in mother of pearl colors with a thin film of tears, but did not otherwise deny you.

You swiped the last few pearls from the corners of his eyes and his cheeks, the water of his tears crystallized to salt and carbonate the moment they hit air. “Three days or five or seven,” you said, “no more, no less.”

He pressed his cheek into your palm. You cupped the pearls in your hands like water until you reached the base of the secret path to the lagoon. Then you folded them into a square of fabric and tucked them into a pouch at your hip.

You clambered up the walls of his sanctuary, elegant as a climbing vine, and were gone.

Mei was sitting upon her throne when you threw yourself at her feet. The stone and wood pattern of the floor was alternating warm and cool beneath your knees and palms. After all of your research, it finally occurred to you to wonder whether that was another subtle nod to the history of the relationship between the beings of the land and the water, between your family and others on the mainland and the clans beneath the waves.

The queen looked down from her seat for a few long, heartstopping moments. You kept your face turned to the floor.

“Go.” She made the soft command and everyone she gave it to sprang to obey. The room rustled with the sounds of their retreat.

“Approach.”

You rose and came closer, tilting your head up slowly, afraid to see her expression.

It was kind, which was as much as you could have hoped for.

You looked around briefly, moving only your eyes while your head was tipped to the floor. The only people left in the throne room besides the two of you were a single minister who seemed to be taking the minutes of the day.

“What is it you have to ask me?” she asked gently.

Suddenly, the enormity of your request stole the air from your lungs.

Your sister gave you several long moments that did not return your ability to form words appropriate to a petition from the court.

“Or –” her voice was harder, more of the queen in it, “– would you like to explain what you’ve been up to for the last six months.”

That was easier, and harder. It was likely the mer lived beyond humans, concealing themselves and their own internal conflicts with relative ease, but you worried about exposing them nonetheless.

Mei called your name with a near sigh, only concealed because this was an official meeting and her irritations with you didn’t need to go on record. “You have to start somewhere.”

“It’s not my right,” you finally got out, thinking of the whole unknown world you were ready to dive into.

“Then tell me what is.”

You struggled for words and then eventually said, “Has anyone in our family ever encountered something from the ocean? Something difficult to explain.”

Mei leaned back against the carved scenery of the throne. Birds and fish and the long-tailed lemurs from the mountains soared and wound and climbed their way through the wood.

After a pause she offered, “Did you find something near-human, perhaps, in the genealogies?”

A heavy weight fell from your chest, and a wonder took its place.

“You know?”

She did not shrug but the emotion was there as she said, “I am the queen. It is my job to know. Many of the newer family registries were burned during the coup. It was easier when we returned to access some very old ones, which had not been touched in some time.”

“So we did once mix blood with the sea,” you said, half to yourself.

Mei looked at you, and something heavy and sad entered her eyes. You met that gaze, heart in your throat. Then she shook herself, and that emotion passed.

“Ask your question,” she said once again.

“Would you let our line join blood to blood with the water again?”

Mei’s green eyes were fathomless as the sea.

Sasuke waited, three days and then five and then seven and on the first dawn hour of the seventh day, a slow entourage of elegantly dressed people made their way carefully down to the lagoon.

First came a tall woman in a blue gown and red herringboned hair with a look about her that said she had survived much. With her was a dark robed man with heavy beads around his neck, a woman carefully juggling a portfolio of papers, and another man with a broad, heavy sword in his hands. And amidst them all was you, dressed as simply as a sailor in a billowing cotton shirt and loose, tied breaches.

A wreath of silver kelp blades was woven in the red haired woman’s hair so Sasuke assumed she must be the queen you spoke of, your sister.

She knelt down by the water and arranged her skirts as carefully as any selkie. Over her legs, between the slits in the fabric, glimmered a network of silver armor.

“It has been a long time since one of our people returned to the sea,” she said. “And now you wish to take the most beloved of my few remaining companions away.”

Sasuke lifted his chin. “I take nothing, as the sea takes nothing.”

“No,” the queen murmured, “things are seldom so deliberate, but you are a living, thinking creature, the same as I.”

She held out a hand and drew you down beside her when you placed your hand in hers. She drew you forward until your fingertips touched the water and then let you go.

She beckoned forward the woman with her folio of papers and they were laid out, weighted with polished stones and the leftover parts of dead things from the water, their spines and smooth curved outlines as familiar to Sasuke as their names.

The queen drew her fingers across words which Sasuke was faintly surprised to recognize. The queen noticed because a queen must notice everything.

“Our kingdoms share blood,” she explained slowly, every word precisely dictated. The woman who had spread out the papers slid a brush across a blank sheet, marking the conversation.

“We share language and words and music, although they have grown different from one another over generations.

“I will give you the last golden piece of my heart,” she continued. “But each year you must return, and show to me all is well, with both of you.” Her clever green eyes darted between you and Sasuke. “That is the price of my magic.”

He nodded, once, tight and sharp, and the queen seemed to relax, settling back on the rocks as easy as if they were her own great chair up in the castle with its wing-shaped roofs.

The queen turned to you and called your name so softly, like waking a child from sleep. “This is the first such alliance in more than a century. It will be your responsibility to learn the ways of the water. You will return each year so you do not forget the ways of the land.”

“I understand,” you said.

The queen cupped your cheek and pressed her brow to yours.

She pricked her thumb, scarred from pricking, against one tooth and pressed a bloody thumbprint to the laid out papers with their tiny, perfect letters, and the one still glistening with fresh ink. Sasuke followed her mark, and you after, and then you pulled away from her and lifted the loose shirt over your head.

The loose pants fell in a dark puddle around your feet, and bare, you eased yourself into the water, hands holding the rocks while your feet turned little eddies that hummed against the sensitive scales of his tail.

The man in dark robes pulled an empty wooden bowl from his sleeve. The queen pulled a black lacquered container from hers. The lid came off with a subtle click and inside was barely an inch of shimmering white powder. With a start, Sasuke realized that these were what remained of the tears you had taken with you.

A pinch of the gleaming powder fell from the queen’s fine fingers. She dipped her head and caught her own tear, her own whisper of loneliness into the wooden bowl. She held it out for you and you pressed your thumb and forefinger together until one perfectly mixed drop of blood and salt water fell in the mixture.

The man in dark robes dipped a stick of something that looked like dark polished wood into the bowl and stirred three tines and passed the bowl back to the queen.

She dipped a finger inside and smeared your lips red and the drops fell between your lips like rubies.

Then she moved back on the rocks, eyes both excited and sad, like all those who knew true magic.

Sasuke looked at you, lips red with your own blood and the sheen of his fallen tears and whetted with a queen’s permission.

Between one breath and the next, your eyes went wide and silently, you fell beneath the waves like a spear thrown into the water.

Sasuke dove down immediately, but even with his eyes, you were lost to him in the dark. It should have been impossible. The sandy bottom of the lagoon, though deep and cool and still let in a little bit of light.

With the dawn, even the water shone like it was filling with blood.

You fell alone through streaks of red light, diluting slowly with gold. It was like drowning, like suffocating. The blood on your lips and the tears in your mouth put the savor of grief, the tang of loneliness, the suggestion of life that comes from leaving one place for another on your tongue.

Your ribs ached and your throat ached, like being strangled with a great hand. That hand squeezed and now your legs could only thrash together as one, no more kicking toward an imaginary surface.

The thrum of water - how vast the sea was, how easy to pour yourself into it and let it take you - but no! you must keep your own form, even caught in a fist - it pressed against you like a hundred holy mantras, like the prayers that rose on the day your sister the queen was crowned.

You fought against the weight, struggling against the instinct to hold all air in your lungs. It went quickly stale as your body shifted and twisted, becoming one with the water, the stab of bones realigning. Silvery bubbles escaped your mouth as you writhed, looking for Sasuke, looking for Mei, looking for the surface.

You were sinking slowly, drowning. But as the oxygen seeped from the little air left in your lungs, panic left with it. One could not fight the might of the sea.The salt taste of blood and tears lingered on your tongue. A rippling sensation passed over your skin. You could let it take you, to pull all of you through the endless tide and currents. There would be no leaving, no loneliness, no goodbyes. You would be with Sasuke always, as constant as the sea itself.

Sasuke. Mei.

It was their tears on your tongue. It was they who would have only the formless ocean left to whisper its fathomless stories in their ears.

There was no way to swim far and fast enough to taste air again, but if you did not try, their grief would be wasted.

You fought, trails of bubbles like tiny jellyfish trailing from your nose and the corner of your blood painted mouth. Your ribs ached, but you reached upward towards the slanting sunlight. If you were crying too, you would not know, for your cheeks were wet already, but you felt heat behind your eyes. You thrashed with legs held tight together, felt the catch of the ocean over your skin.

This was it, barely any change to the light and you were out of air but still you struggled. And still you lost as your mouth opened and the last of the bubbles pushing water out of your nose drifted further and faster in the direction you wanted to go, and you breathed in.

It burned like drowning. It is said that the ocean was alike to the blood of living things. It burned like you had swallowed flame, but you still thrashed, kicking your aching, unfamiliar bones together, toward the surface

The ocean tried to swallow you whole because it was a great thing and you were so very small and it had no care for your sorrows or anyone else's. But you did. You cared. You took another gulp of saltwater, pulling toward the surface. Maybe it was growing closer, maybe the water was growing less red.

You clawed and reached and swam, and at some point you realized that you were not drowning, that although your lungs were filled with the heaviness of water, your vision stayed clear to the edges, too clear for underwater, and your kicks were no longer kicks but the thrusts of a mighty tail, and you were indeed seeing the approaching refraction of the sun.

You breached with a leap, your momentum nearly carrying you up and out of the water until you managed to curve back downward in an arc. You sensed rather than saw his surprised backstroke, the way he was swimming near the bottom of the lagoon and surged up to meet you.

He stopped, perfect, with long lashes like a deer’s, dark eyes almost liquid themselves, skin milky as jade. You’d never noticed before the ever so faint patterning of scales, palest purple, that ran along his arms and ribs, even though you’d felt them. He flicked his tail in restless back and forth motion, holding in front of you, not touching.

The magnificent blue and violet of his fins was tucked close to his body, which you knew meant he was unsure.

You looked down at yourself. You had your own tail now, strongly muscled, stronger than human legs to cut through the water to the depths of the sea. It had spines and fins, fluttered like the voluminous silk of a dress, drifted with each adjustment and motion you made.

“I am with you,” you said to Sasuke, breathed, your words new and different, but shaped by the instinct of a creature of the sea.

You felt like you were drowning, still. The weight of water in your newly changed lungs reminded you that you were no longer above the water.

But oh. It slid into place as you looked into Sasuke’s eyes. There was a faint ring of black patterning in them that had been invisible to your fully human eyes. The dawn-red flash was more obvious now with every turn of his head. He swam around you slowly, taking in the fullness of your new form.

There were so many new senses it was almost blinding. You could feel the movement of water, the currents brushing against your skin and scales, the electric vibration of Sasuke circling around. Mei was a spot of warmth stronger than Sasuke somewhere above. Was that her magic? You did not know.

But Sasuke, he sang to you, his very presence hummed in your new bones. He felt tethered to you with the warmth of a sun warmed current. You knew instinctually that his inspection was nothing predatory, not curiosity exactly, but more like interest, more like … your instincts spoke to you of the slow movements of a courting display. Experimentally, you fanned the wide train of your tail, flexing muscles you hadn’t had minutes before, moving slowly so it rippled and showed off the tracery of vein-like patterns drawn by your scales. It pleased you that it was reminiscent of leaves, a reminder of the land you came from.

If this focus, this sense of belonging was half of what Sasuke had felt while you were only human, you understood even better the strength of emotion that had led him to shed tears.

Sasuke spiraled closer, the slow humming sounds in his throat translating into comprehensible description, concepts rather than words. Warm sand between skin and scales, the change from shallow to deep water, colored stones that guide in different sequences. It was both what he saw, and the feeling those things evoked in him – a comfort that never faded, the impression of moving from one place to somewhere very different, the bracelet you had given him. He wanted to go, to swim with you.

You wanted to go with him. You found yourself stirring your tail, clumsily and Sasuke’s affectionate consternation, almost a laugh, vibrating through the water. Something stopped you. There was something important. Another warm tether. You blinked. Mei. You had forgotten her so quickly. Or not forgotten, rather that she had drifted to another corner of your mind. Sasuke’s presence had been so strong and immediate, pulled your focus like a magnet.

The sound you made was unpracticed and in frustration you had to switch to gestures. Sasuke blinked and made a soothing sound almost like a very low echo that vibrated in your chest. He looked up to where a rippling image in red and blue sat by the water.

You breached the surface for the first time since the changes to your flesh. Air burned through your throat and nose, so light you felt like you might drift away. It was disorienting.

Mei’s eyes met yours, wide as though surprised. Maybe because the spell had worked so well, or because you had come back at all. She looked at you. You looked the same but so profoundly and obviously different.

Slowly, feeling the strength and speed in your limbs, you reached up and wiped away the tear that fell from her eye – clear and warm against your fingers.

“Go.” She whispered. That warm thread thrummed strong and malleable in your new senses.

You lifted yourself from the water to press your lips to her brow. She smelled like anemone flowers, which is something you had never realized before. It would be something to remember her by. Even though they weren’t the same, each time you saw one underwater, you would think of her.

“I love you Mei-oneesan.”

You could sense that Sasuke had popped his head above water, eager for the goodbye, to show you the open sea. A low, slow vibration found you, tingled up the new spines lining your tail like an overt extension of your spine, a reminder that he was here - comfort, but also excitement.

“I’m not going away,” you said to Mei. You slipped back so that the fishlike half of your body was submerged, looked back at the mer looking with expectant dark eyes at you. “I’m just going to love him.”

Mei’s hand found your cheek. Her fingers traced across the faint flash of new scale so fine and soft it blended with your skin. “Love him well,” she said. Whatever that meant for his people, she did not know, but she knew you would do your best to figure it out, she had every confidence in your abilities to adapt, and more importantly, to build a new life.

“I will,” you whispered, suddenly elated.

You spared a glance back, but you would return. Sasuke gave an adorably impatient little jerk of his head. Ready?

A sharp sound came readily from your throat, although from a place lower than the human voice box. You knew it to be some kind of affirmative, but that was going to take some getting used to. Everything would be new. A thrilled shiver went through your body as Sasuke dived below the waves. You followed close behind through the tunnels carved from the protective rocky wall, stones red and then black and then green marking your way.

The ocean opened up ahead. The water you drew over your new gills was like a breath of fresh air despite its aching heaviness. Sasuke waited, watching as you took it all in with eyes that saw much better in the depths, but there was still a point in every direction where you could no longer discern more than color. You focussed back on him, eyes wide. You beat your tail a few times to catch up, stopping just within reach for your more decorative fins to brush against Sasuke’s.

He reached out with seeking fingers and you reached back. Then he opened his mouth as though to taste the water. You imitated him, which seemed to amuse him. There was a burst of something taken in like flavor, but more like scent over your palate. Sasuke turned towards whatever sign he had found pointing him to what he was looking for. You followed into the blue expanse.

#mermay 2023 #mermay fic #uchiha sasuke #uchiha sasuke x reader #sasuke x reader #mermaid!sasuke #little mermaid au #but it's in reverse #long post #i think i'll cross post this one to ao3 as well #link will be up eventually for anyone who prefers reading there

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