FalseRoar

It was odd, seeing his friend move so slowly. Under the water, they could swim circles around him, their smaller size making it all the easier to dart through narrow openings and tight channels in the rocky coves around the bottom of the bay faster than he could swim in open water.

It couldn’t just be the pain of walking that slowed them down—it hurt, yes, especially once William had slowed down after rushing here to remember little things like the jagged edge to each step, but they had been on land before, and by the sound of it been all over town running errands for the deep sea mer to pay off the debt for the magic pendants. And they’d done it without him, without someone else to lean on, while now it seemed to take all they had just to cross the short distance to the shore even with Celine’s help.

“You’re sure this doctor of yours can help?” Willam asked, and it would have surprised his friend to learn that he could lower his booming voice enough to keep it from reaching them.

Damien followed his glance and nodded. “He’s patched up worse. The local fishermen swear by him, and he’s saved more than a few sailors who were brought into port with barely a hope of making it. Not to mention he’s probably the only reason Mark has survived as long as he has, for a man who gets into the weirdest accidents.”

“It’s my fault we were out last night,” William admitted, like every other word directed to the other mer since then hadn’t been an apology. None of them felt like they had added up to nearly enough, not yet. “I don’t…I didn’t…”

“They’ll be okay, I promise,” Damien said, making sure to look William in the eye as he said it. “We just need to get them to the doctor so their injuries can be treated as soon as we can, as safely as we can. Which will be easier if you can help convince them to go and not just jump overboard at the first chance.”

“They wouldn’t—” William paused, remembering how often they had played down needing to see this other human who could help fix them up over breakfast. Apparently, they were worried that this “doctor” might notice something was off about them, which William thought was a bit ridiculous. With these pendants from the deep sea mer, they looked no different than any other human, but then Y/N had always been more cautious. And very quick to flee, as he’d discovered on their first meeting. “…I can catch them if I need to.”

“Before or after—never mind,” Damien said, shaking away that thought. “I’d rather you didn’t need to catch them in the first place, but they’ll go along with this if you do, right? So please believe me when I say going to get professional help is the best choice for them, for their sake.”

“…Okay,” William said, after a moment to work out what Damien was getting at. If it was just them in the boat with the two humans, they probably wouldn’t think twice about jumping overboard and swimming away in mer form, but he didn’t believe for a second they would risk leaving him behind if he insisted on staying. “Then I believe you.”

Damien seemed taken aback by this, so much so he didn’t realize how close they already were to the water until he’d already stepped in the path of a gently lapping wave. “What?”

William shrugged, following his lead in putting the boat down just shy of floating. “You saved them last night, so I don’t see why you wouldn’t still be trying to help them now. And if you believe this ‘doctor’ can help, then we’ll go. Makes sense to you, doesn’t it Y/N?”

William’s voice carried easily to the other mer approaching with Celine, who bit their lip before admitting, “I guess so.”

“You guess so?” Celine asked, arching an eyebrow. “What’s the alternative, slap some more bandages on it and wait to see if those wounds get infected? Or go with what passes for a ship’s doctor on whatever tub happens to be in port right now?”

“Celine,” Damien said, turning the name into a warning, but she just shrugged him off.

“Don’t worry, Dr. Iplier is…eccentric, but he’s the best doctor the town has.” Celine paused, arm outstretched to give Y/N support as she watched them step into the waiting boat, before admitting, “Not an exceptionally high bar, but he’s helped our family out a lot over the years.”

“Again, mostly Mark,” Damien muttered under his breath, getting a light, friendly slap to the shoulder from Celine before she stepped into the boat herself and sat down next to the mer. “William, would you mind helping me row? It’ll be easier if we each take an oar.”

“I don’t think you could stop me from trying,” William said, breaking into a smile at the very idea.

Together, he and Damien pushed the boat into deeper water before climbing in, Damien using his oar to push it further out before they settled into place side-by-side facing the other two. There was so little room between the two seats that the brother and sister both sat at opposite angles to give the other space, while William and Y/N’s feet and legs were so entangled neither one could have easily jumped overboard if the mood struck them, at least not without a struggle and some bruised knees.

William was familiar with boats, of course. There were so many in the bay, clustered around the docks or wandering out into the deeper waters, everything from boats smaller than this that could barely hold a single fisherman hoping to cast a line to massive vessels that seemed to spew out people and all kinds of interesting things when they came into port, only for more people and more things to gather back in and sail off again.

He’d maybe ventured closer to a boat or two than he should have back in his younger days, or as recent as a week or two before his injury. It was just so fascinating, drifting in the wake of the big ships to listen to snippets of conversation, sometimes for so long he risked venturing out to sea with them, or skirting around the fishing lines and nets cast from the smaller boats, just to see if they’d caught anything interesting or maybe to tug on a line or two to see how the people above reacted.

If Damien thought this rowboat of his was a little crowded, then he should have seen the small boat a group of very drunk humans took out onto the bay late one night, so many crowded aboard that it was a wonder it didn’t immediately sink beneath their weight, or how far they managed to get before the smallest wave sent them all tipping over. William recalled overhearing one of them, a fisherman nursing a hangover the next morning, admit that he was surprised none of them had drowned, which William thought was kind of impressive himself. He’d only had to push one or two toward the surface, and maybe given one a nudge away from the rip current they were floating a little too close to, but otherwise they had mostly figured it out on their own after a lot of pointless splashing around.

He’d asked one of the elders once, when he was a kid, why humans never came down to the deeper waters of the cove, choosing instead to drift around on those flimsy boats or, when they did get in the water, to splash around near the shore or only dive for short periods before quickly going back up to the surface. He thought it must be because they were so very bad at swimming, the way their arms and legs thrashed about, and had been shocked to learn that drowning was a thing.

So shocked, in fact, that he got in trouble less than a day later for getting too close to the swimmers by the shore, because he was so terrified that every human who dipped below the surface might not be able to get back up again on their own.  Apparently, someone had seen enough of his dorsal fin for people to start talking about sharks in the shallows, although by the time he was allowed to leave the watchful eye of the group and hunt on his own again, the humans had gone right back to swimming and diving without a care.

Now here he was, mimicking Damien’s movements with his oar to move the boat along, slowly at first then faster as they fell into a rhythm. He could hear the creak and groan of the boat, under the pressure of the waves lapping against the sides, he could feel the salt of the sea spray on his face, a cool relief against the morning sun overhead. It wouldn’t take much to send this boat toppling over, but here, on top of the waves, he could see for miles—out to sea behind Y/N and Celine’s heads, past the lighthouse on one side and the edge of the bay on the other, and somewhere behind him that town with its people who he’d watched so desperately over the years was drawing closer with every row of the oar.

Yeah, he could see the appeal.

The other mer was watching the shoreline now, their gaze as distant and thoughtful as ever, although they blinked and returned his smile when they caught his stare. It was a small, reserved smile, and utterly familiar.

William relaxed, or as much as he could while keeping pace with Damien. For all his looking around, he had yet to notice that he was actually the one setting the pace, or recognize the signs that it was all Damien could do to keep up. Someone else could have pointed that out, but Celine was focused on other things at the moment.

“Where are you two from?” she was asking, voice slightly raised to be heard over the sound of the water.

“Up river,” Y/N answered, at the same moment William said with a laugh, “The sea.”

Without missing a beat, the other mer added, “We travel a lot. We’re just stopping by here, before we move on.”

Move on?

Their small smile was gone, and beside him William could feel Damien miss a beat, his oar catching the water in a way that made the boat wobble for a moment. It was just a small pause, long enough for Damien and William to check what the other was doing and start rowing again, but it gave William time to point out, “It’s not like we’re in a hurry though. Lots to see and do here, right, Y/N?”

They hesitated, giving Celine an opening to laugh. “Lots to see and do, here? You really haven’t seen much of the town yet, have you?”

“We haven’t had much of a chance to look around,” the other mer admitted.

“That’s right,” William said. “Nothing past the docks, at least for me.”

And even that was only what was more or less visible from the surface of the water, usually at night when he was less likely to be spotted.

“Well, there’s a few things here and there, like the theater and the boardwalk,” Celine admitted as she leaned back in her seat to stare up at the cloud-free blue sky, letting the wind toss her short hair around her face. “Enough to keep the tourists and sailors interested, I suppose, but it’s different if you’ve grown up here. Isn’t that right, Damien?”

Damien shrugged, or as much as he could while trying to keep time with William. “I don’t know, this area’s always been nice enough to me. There’re things to do if you know what to look for, but you get bored too easily.”

“Says the guy who’d rather hide out at his lighthouse all day than go into town,” Celine shot back. “Not all of us can be entertained doing the same thing, day in and day out.”

William nodded, while beside him Damien bristled at the remark. The mer had seen and done all there was to do within the bay ages ago, and was constantly running up against the shiver’s rules for going into waters too deep or too shallow, too close to the humans or too close to the territory of the deep sea mers. Slowly drowning in stagnant waters.

And then Y/N arrived, and the water started to move again. The idea that if there was a way in, there had to be a way out.

Now they were about to unknowingly stir the water again.

“What would you prefer to do?” they asked, their voice barely audible over the wind and the waves. “If given the choice to go anywhere, do anything, what would you do?”

“Mm,” Celine closed her eyes, letting the sun rest on her face as she considered the question before opening them with a mischievous smile. “A little bit of everything, I think. Life’s short, why not make the most of it?”

Looking back, William thought it began at this moment, with those words, with that smile. When he first started to fall a little in love with Celine.

((End of part 4. Thanks for reading!

Back in the first 2 parts, the POV switched from William to Damien and both of them referred to the other mer as "they/them" instead of "you." I wanted to use second person for chapters told from "your"/the not actually a District Attorney in this AU perspective if I continued the story, and after going back and forth decided to do that but keep it third person when we're back with Damien and William. Mostly to stick with the original, but also because a lot of the time they really are just trying to guess at what's going through your head during all of this.

But you were used to the pain, or at least some of it. Used to masking the discomfort during your previous trips on land so as not to draw attention to it.

Or at least, that’s what you thought until Damien quietly asked, “Are you okay?”

Every step.

The deep sea mer had stressed the words, trying to make sure you understood before handing over the pendants.

Every single step on land, on these legs that were both yours and not, in this body both familiar and strange, in this form that you had asked for, begged for, for your sake and William’s, would be nothing but pain.

Each step a fresh knife stabbing up through your feet, reminding you that you were not made for this act.

“I’m fine,” you told Damien, forcing a smile. “It just takes some getting used to, that’s all.”

“If it’s so terrible,” you had asked in that first meeting with the deep sea mer, “Then why have others done it? I know I’m not the first to come to you, asking for this. Did they all give up and go back into the sea?”

“Most of them,” was the answer that made your heart sink, before it was followed by a smile, and the words, “But not all of them.”

Before you and Damien even left his room, Celine had answered the pounding knock at the door. You could hear William’s voice, hear the strain if not the actual words even before you saw him standing outside, his bushy eyebrows knit together in concern before he glanced over Celine’s shoulder and spotted you.

“Y/N!” His whole face lit up, and he crossed the space between the two of you like it was nothing at all, his arms outstretched. It was only too much experience with William’s great hugs that made you step back in time and hold your hands up in defense.

“Easy, William!”

Damien, recognizing the danger, added, “As excited as you must be to see your friend is safe and sound, they were injured in last night’s storm. Be gentle with them, please.”

“Of course,” William said, managing to sound offended at the notion that he might hurt his friend, as though he hadn’t just been about to swing you up into his arms like always. But his brief annoyance gave way to sheer relief as he gently pulled you close, careful not to touch anywhere near the bandages still visible beneath Damien’s borrowed shirt. “You’re okay.”

“You’re okay,” he whispered again, neither of you sure if he was reassuring you or himself at this point. “I’m so sorry, Y/N.”

“There’s nothing to be sorry about,” you said, voice somewhat muffled in his embrace, and you felt his chuckle before he pulled back, hands now holding yours. “You—”

Whatever you were about to say froze on your lips as the two of you stared at each other in surprise, both finally realizing the same thing.

There were the obvious differences, going from mer to human. No gills, no webbing between your fingers. Both of your skin tones had changed in subtle ways, as had your eyes. More hair, as evidenced by that on William’s bare arms and the bit of chest visible under the shirt he had managed to more or less figure out on his own, aside from the few buttons just below the neckline.

There was also a change that you hadn’t even considered might be a possibility until now.

William guffawed and ruffled your hair, the gesture only highlighting the fact that in human form, the two of you were nearly the same height. He still had a few fingers’ width on you, but it was nothing compared to your mer forms. “Look at you, growing up when I wasn’t looking.”

Before you could protest that, if anything, he was the one who got smaller, Celine cleared her throat and spoke up.

“Excuse me, but who are you, exactly?”

William turned toward her with a baffled smile as you quickly answered for him, “This is William. We were separated during the storm last night.”

“That…didn’t really answer my question,” Celine said, glancing at her brother who merely shrugged as though wondering what she wanted from him. “How do you two know each other? And what were you doing out in that storm in the first place?”

“Well, that’s an easy one,” William answered, still smiling in the face of her questions. “Y/N here is my friend, no one I trust more in this world—why, they saved my life! Wouldn’t be here now if it weren’t for them, in more ways than one. As for what we were doing out in the storm, well that’s on me I’m afraid. They wanted to stay inside where it was safe, but I think there’s nothing more exhilarating than a good storm, don’t you?”

You tensed, afraid William might slip and say more, but Celine actually laughed in disbelief.

“You went out in that storm last night? Willingly?”

“Celine,” Damien warned, but William simply shrugged.

“Why not? But we misjudged the waves, and one knocked us away from each other, and the next thing I knew my little friend here was gone.”

You could have done without the “little” there, especially considering your current circumstances.

“I feel like that right there is exactly ‘why not,’” Celine pointed out, but catching her brother’s look she admitted, “But I’ve been known to walk the shore when the weather’s just the right amount of awful despite Mark’s insistence that it’s a bad idea, so I suppose I can’t be too critical.”

“To be fair, Mark thinks anything involving the ocean is a terrible idea,” Damien added, getting a soft laugh out of Celine. “He thinks I’m insane for choosing to live out here on the rocks, never mind the folks who actually go out on the water for a living.”

“Mark?” you asked, relieved to see a way of steering this conversation into safer waters.

“My husband,” Celine answered. “Mark Iplier, the actor.”

She stressed the words with something that sounded like sarcasm, but that didn’t make it any easier to guess their meaning, not even as she continued, “He’s almost finished wrapping another movie, but it’s the theater that you can’t get him talking about unless you have nothing else to do the rest of the day. I swear, there’s nothing else on his mind except the next opportunity to get on a stage in front of another audience and play the hero.”

Neither you nor William knew what to say to that, leaving an awkward pause before Celine clapped her hands together and said, “Oh, right, breakfast! William, we were just about to eat something if you’d like to join us.”

“And then we’ll take you to the doctor to get checked out,” Damien said to you, with a glance at William to judge his reaction and see if there would be any resistance there.

But William was already following Celine across the open room to the kitchen area, saying as he did so, “Food sounds wonderful! What is all of this?”

Because you were looking for it, you saw the small wince as he turned away, the limp in William’s step that he couldn’t fully hide.

“Those who stay on land, they either learn to endure the pain, or they embrace this new life, fully.” The deep sea mer had stared at you, a stare so long and so deep that you began to feel like you were another of the human treasures on the cave walls waiting to be picked apart thoroughly in search of how it worked. “Don’t get me wrong, it still hurts, but they have a reason to keep walking all the same. Without one, without that reason, the pain is not worth the price. Do you have a reason to forsake the sea, to forsake freshwater and salt for land?”

You took a deep breath, and felt Damien’s touch on your uninjured arm as he said, “Maybe you should sit down. There are some chairs in the kitchen.”

He paused and looked at the other two, then at the small round table not far from where Celine was pulling out utensils and gathering everything for breakfast with the ease of familiarity, even as she listed off the options to a William who was clearly amazed at it all.

“Although I may have to scrounge up another chair if there’ll be four of us,” he admitted.

“You can always sit on a crate,” his sister called and when he made a childish face at her out of reflex, she shrugged. “What? Just pile up a couple so it’s the right height, you’ll be fine. Not like you’d make a guest sit on a makeshift chair, that would simply be rude, Damien.”

“I’m not sure you count as a guest at this point,” Damien countered as Celine fished a motley selection of glasses and mugs out of his cabinets. “You know this place just about as well as I do.”

You listened to the two go back and forth while Damien slowly walked with you, patient as you forced yourself to keep going until finally you could sit down in the spindly wooden chair he pulled out for you. It wasn’t the same color or style as the other two chairs at the table, and certainly not the large box that Damien eventually pulled over to complete the set, but then little else in the small cottage seemed to fit together in any rhyme or reason beyond a general, faded look to it all, like the constant salt and sea breeze had worn away all the edges and colors of everything except the vibrant yellow raincoat still hanging on a hook by the door.

Not that you had enough familiarity with human decorations or furniture to expect matching furniture, or to expect anything except the sense of…comfortableness in the cottage. This was a place to rest, to sleep and eat when its owner wasn’t devoting time to the lighthouse that towered over it, and over generations it had been molded to fit that exact purpose piece by piece. Even those bits that were purely decorative were by and large pieces of driftwood or the other odd and end that washed up on the rocky shore like you had, barring the occasional gift that again, had you been familiar enough with human habits, would have been easy to spot, like the snow globe on the mantel above the fireplace.

The effect of it all was that, as you sat there listening to the others talk while the smell of cooking food filled the kitchen, you slowly began to relax. To allow yourself the hope that, maybe, this would all work out. Sure, this wasn’t exactly how you wanted to start your new lives on land, and you’d already broken one of the deep sea mer’s rules by letting Damien find out what you were, but there were worse ways washing up on shore in the midst of that storm could have ended.

After all, you thought when the other three joined you at the tiny table, Damien had been nothing but kind and caring toward you despite knowing what you were. Celine, despite her questions, seemed ready to accept and overlook your and William’s oddities, such as when William kept fumbling his fork after a false start picking it up in the wrong direction entirely. William himself, even though he must be feeling some pain, was still barreling forward with the same boundless enthusiasm on land as he had back in the water.

All reason enough to believe that, whatever the deep sea mer said, this would work. You and William, despite the pain, despite the less-than-ideal start, would make this new life work. Together.

“And if you have reason enough, there is one way to make this new life permanent,” the deep sea mer had said after laying out all the ways this could go wrong, among their rules. “One thing that will help you let go of the pain and become fully human, if you can find it.”

You brushed away the words now much as you had back then.

To live on land, to give up everything you had known before for a life that was never meant for you would be painful, you had no problem understanding that. But the idea that “true love’s kiss” could magically make that pain go away…

“You can laugh now, but this spell is meaningless if your heart isn’t in it. You both have to want this, want this enough to throw away everything under the water for an uncertain, painful future, and to keep wanting it even when things go wrong. And they will go wrong.”

Things already had gone wrong, but despite your injuries, despite your pain, you couldn’t imagine ever regretting the decision to take those two shell pendants. There was nothing for you, back under the water.

No, you had other things to worry about, like how to get out of seeing this doctor Damien and Celine kept insisting on.

Or how to use your own fork—watching the others, it seemed so simple, but nothing you speared with it seemed to want to stay on for long enough to actually reach your mouth.

But you and William could learn, just as with enough time you could learn to live with the pain of walking on land.

“Do you really believe you’re strong enough to bear the cost for two?”

For a new life, for William, you would learn.

((End of Part 3. Thank you for reading!

Confession time: I had this and the next part written and ready to post a month ago, but just couldn't bring myself to post it--I didn't want to start posting if I didn't know for sure I could finish the story, but couldn't bring myself to keep writing if I didn't know I would ever post the story. 0/10 spiral, would not recommend. So, I'm going to aim to post every few days in the hopes of not doing that again, and see how it goes, I guess. Sorry that I can't be more certain than that, but I'm trying to keep those expectations real low for all of us.

Also, uh, sorry it's taken 6 years to get back to this story. And over 2 to share any longer stories at all, I think. This is one of the last "been meaning to get around to that" things on my list as far as this fandom goes, but I've sure dragged my feet getting here.