A/N: I wasn't planning on writing anything like this at all, but then an idea fell out of the sky a few weeks ago and just wouldn't let my imagination go... A week of outlining and several thousand words later, I had to admit that this was really happening!
A quick note on the rating: the M rating currently only applies for the first chapter. The rest of the story as planned (so far) is at about a T rating and does not have a lot of violence.
Also, please keep in mind that since this is an AU, the characterizations may be slightly different from canon. I have tried my best to keep the characters recognizable in their new surroundings, but some things may be slightly different due to the fact that these characters have lead different lives than in canon. That said, if you feel that I am mischaracterizing anyone, please let me know!
Thank you for reading through this long note! I hope that you enjoy the first chapter!
The ocean was quiet, but not quite still.
Hanji could only hear the movement of the water as she swam forward, flowing over her tail. The reef just below her extended in all directions, creating an illusion of endlessness. A rainbow of reds, blues, and greens from the coral shone between the swaying leaves of kelp and other sea plants as she passed by. The only thing reminding Hanji that the reef indeed had an end were the far-off outlines of sunken human ships, some of them so old that they were becoming reefs as well.
Hanji stopped, dipping her tail towards the sea floor to slow her momentum. Her hair billowed into her vision for a moment and then settled along with the water. Hanji looked around, checking to see if she could spot the telltale flash of sunlight on scales. This was the only part of the reef that didn't have merpeople living inside. Here, Hanji could be alone. But that didn't mean that it was a secret from the rest of the pod.
Satisfied that no one was coming, Hanji lifted her tail until she was floating horizontal to the surface. The sun flickered down at her, its light bouncing and shifting with each passing second. Hanji held up a hand towards it, half shielding her eyes, half reaching—
Hanji glanced around again, just to be sure, and set her mouth in a determined line. Today would be the day she would find out why the surface was banned. The real reason, not just because the rest of the pod believed in a story. With a powerful stroke of her tail, Hanji rose to the surface.
The closer she got, the clearer the surface because, to the point that she almost wasn't sure where it was. For the first time in Hanji's life, the sun solidified into a bright circle that hurt to look at. She began to feel a different kind of current pushing and pulling at her body, enough to rock her from side to side but not enough to move her from her place in the water. Waves, she thought. She didn't know that they could be so small.
Hanji stopped before the top of her head could make contact with the surface. She reached up and dragged her fingertips across it, spreading ripples that were swept away by the next roll of the water. It felt smoother than the untouched sand on the ocean floor. Hanji smiled, drawing back a bit so that she could shoot up through the surface and—
Something between a rumble and a buzz echoed through the water. Hanji's head quickly turned as the flow of the water became rougher, waves beginning to crash together with a blur of white foam. She dove down to get away from it, watching at a spot between the surface and the reef as the source of the noise came closer. The shadow cutting across the top of the ocean was familiar.
The boat passed over her, leaving a trail of foam in its wake and continuing to make that loud noise. Hanji wondered how long it would take it to dip underneath the waves, but it kept going. Her interest was rising with every second. She'd only seen boats sink. How long would this one be able to float? Hanji flicked her tail and followed it.
As a much younger mermaid, Hanji had watched dozens of human's boats sink down to the merpeople's depths from the rolling, stormy surface above. She'd watched the boat's lights flicker and die as her mother held her close, the pod staying far away from the wreck until the torrent of bubbles ceased. It was the humans' fate to go down with their ships. The merpeople never interfered.
Hanji had many memories from her childhood of her parents taking her hands, linking with the rest of their pod in a wide circle around the shipwrecks, singing a mournful song that echoed for miles under the water.
"Why do we sing?"
"Out of respect."
But Hanji was sure now that it was nothing more than a long-standing tradition. The merpeople didn't respect anything about humans. In fact, the pod was terrified of them. After every shipwreck, her mother would remind her to always stay away from humans, and to never breach the surface.
"Why?"
"Your tail will split in two, and you will die."
The boat turned a little, and Hanji changed her direction as well. Out of the corner of her eye she could see various members of her pod ducking down underneath the reef, out of sight. She knew that some of them would worry about the ship sinking and crashing right on top of their home. This place was the one consistent stop in their migrations. Who knew how long it would take to find a reef big enough to house their pod again?
Hanji kept trailing behind the shadow of the boat. All of the other ships had gone down in storms. Perhaps this one would be different.
It was heading for the pillar of dark volcanic rock just past one of the far ends of the reef. Several smaller pillars jutted out of the sea floor around it, but the biggest one broke the surface, its outline wavering and indistinct as soon as it left the water. Plants and animals even more colorful than the ones in the merpeople's reef thrived off of the rock, but the pod would have nothing to do with the area. It touched the surface, so therefore it was dangerous.
The boat stopped in the center of the circle of pillars. Hanji swam behind one of the shorter ones, peering around the rock to see what the boat would do next. The minutes passed, but nothing happened. Hanji watched the small waves lap against the sides of the boat, wondering if she'd wasted her time.
Then, just as she glanced away, two splashes come off the side of the boat, one after the other. She looked back just in time to see two dark figures emerge from the fading streams of bubbles. Hanji's arms shook with excitement, her tail twitching to the same rhythm, an excited squeal escaping her lips. There was no mistaking it. Those were humans. Actual, live humans.
Hanji had only seen dead humans before. Before this moment, she'd thought of them as puffy and pale and lifeless. The only thing interesting about them was an extra pair of arms where their tails should be, with strange flat hands and stubby fingers on the second set that didn't seem useful for anything. As far as Hanji could tell, the only thing humans could do was drown. She'd been far more interested in the taboo against the surface.
These humans were different. They moved awkwardly in the water, tethered to the boat by long black ropes. Their clothing was also black and skin-tight, with some stripes of blue around the joints and down the sides of their arms. They had long fins attached to their second set of arms in a crude approximation of a tail, and a reflective covering wrapped around their eyes. There was a protruding circle where human mouths normally were, releasing bubbles in a set rhythm like a heartbeat. As one of them moved their fins to spin in a slow circle, Hanji caught sight of a long silver rock attached to their back. She'd never seen humans wear things like that, but she'd also never seen live humans underwater for this long either. Hanji felt a flush of secondhand pride. The humans had figured out how to go underwater without drowning!
The way they swam made it clear that they weren't born to stay in the water, but Hanji admired how fast they adapted to the right movements. She couldn't make out their faces, but their hair was still visible around everything they were wearing, and their body types set them apart.
One was a human male, Hanji was sure, with short hair so light it looked almost silver. He was careful and deliberate in his movements, looking around the area while staying in one place, his legs kicking in small circles. The other was a female, possibly younger than the other one, but Hanji had never been good at guessing human ages. She had longer red hair that was a bright as the sea plants surrounding them, and Hanji smiled at the way she made use of her fake fins, twirling in the water and holding out her arms. She reminded her of some of the younger mermaids in the pod.
One made a hand motion at the other, catching their attention and pointing down. Hanji wondered why they didn't just speak, but then realized that all the stuff on their faces must get in the way. She pressed closer to the rock as they dove down, determined to watch them as long as she could before revealing herself.
The two passed Hanji and continued on to the black rock below where the colorful fish and plants waited, continuing to communicate through hand signals. The redhead reached out her hands towards an anemone, but before Hanji could call out, she simply cupped her hands in the space around it, nodding her head in apparent admiration. Meanwhile, the silver-haired boy followed a small school of fish that hadn't fled when the humans had appeared in the water, tracing lazy circles around one of the pillars.
Hanji was content just watching them, seeing them move through the water, clearly enjoying themselves. The two never strayed far apart from each other even though they examined different things, holding a thumb up at each other every now and again, a gesture that Hanji had never seen before. She was learning new things about humans with every passing moment, to the point that she almost didn't want to reveal herself if that meant that the humans could show her more.
The girl had started examining the pillars, swimming up and down and around them in the space of a few minutes before moving on to the next. She was getting closer. Hanji tensed, and then forced herself to relax. She didn't want to scare the human. Hanji gripped the edges of the rock pillar, ready to push herself out into the open once the redhead came around the next turn, hoping that she wouldn't be able to hear how hard her heart was beating.
A trail of bubbles floated out three pillars away, and Hanji saw the human begin to drift into sight—
—When a shrill scream and a flash of silver punched her out of view.
Hanji's gills flared and her fins stood on end. A monster.
The human girl was struggling against it, but the blood was already rising in a cloud around them. The fake black fins snapped off as she kicked against the rock, pushed down by a thrashing silver tail that had a deep cleft down its middle.
Hanji shook off the shock and plunged towards them, reaching through the rising blood to where she knew that she would find a neck and pulled. The snarling face of the monster rose up to met her, smooth silver scales covering its face. The shape of its body was similar to merpeople and humans, but its mindless predator nature caused the merpeople to only view them as monsters. Its eyes looked like dirty pearls, bulbous and pale. It had no nose, only slits, and several rows of sharp teeth in it's too-wide mouth.
Bits of flesh still clung to the points of its teeth as it shrieked at her, making the bile rise in Hanji's throat. It twisted its entire body, flailing its tail at her and swinging both taloned hands towards her eyes. Hanji tightened her grip around the monster's neck and swung it towards the side of the pillar, its skull connecting with a crack that echoed through the water. Black blood streamed out of its head, mixing with the red, and Hanji dropped the limp body, watching the monster's corpse sink to the sandy floor.
Another shriek sounded, and Hanji looked up to see two more monsters swooping in towards the other human, one ripping through the cord that connected him to the boat, the other pinning his arms to his sides before sinking its teeth into the strange silver rock on his back. Bubbles gushed from the opening, flipping the human over, but there wasn't enough force to knock the monster off.
Hanji sped towards him, flipping her tail around to hit the monster in the face. It connected, and she heard another crack—its neck this time—but the third monster was heading towards them. Hanji flipped over, trying to swim in the right direction to cut it off, but the monster was too fast. It sunk its teeth into the human's midsection, and for a second Hanji could see past the reflective covering into his eyes—the shock, the fear. The monster sunk its teeth in deeper and pulled—Hanji didn't break her gaze with the human as the light in his eyes left him and the water around her turned an even darker red.
She slammed into its forked tail with her own, making it let go of its prey with a snarl. Hanji hit the monster again and again, with her tail and her fists. She grabbed its clawed hands and grappled with it, spinning in the water as it snapped its jaws inches from her face.
They crashed into a pillar, kicking up sand into a cloud around them. Hanji heard a yelp of pain and swam out of the cloud to see the monster swimming away, one half of its strange tail broken and bleeding.
Hanji was still shaking. For a moment, she thought about following it to make sure that it didn't head towards the pod, but then remembered that she was outside the bounds of the reef. After watching it disappear into the blue, Hanji slowly turned around, feeling like she was weighed down with every movement.
The humans had learned to breathe underwater, but they couldn't defend themselves against monsters.
Afterwards, Hanji could never remember how she'd retrieved the human's bodies. The next thing she knew, she was cradling both of them against her. The boy's torso had almost been ripped in two. The girl was missing most of her neck. Even though they had gone still, their blood still flowed out, mixing in the water.
They were the same as the other humans now. Pale. Lifeless.
But even though Hanji had only watched them, she knew that they didn't deserve to lie forgotten in the ocean.
Hanji looked up at the shadow of the boat and began to swim upwards.
The air stung. Hanji had to take another few quick gasps to keep herself from choking on it, her gills flapping. Air wasn't even close to as smooth as water, and for a second Hanji wondered how humans could stand it.
The boat bobbed on the water the same way that she had just below the surface only a few minutes ago—only a few minutes ago, was that possible?—the waves lapping against the hull with a dull thumping noise. Hanji pushed the bodies towards the boat, realizing that she wasn't sure what she was trying to accomplish. But she couldn't just leave them in the water. The blood would attract more monsters soon enough.
A shuffling sound came from the other side of the boat, and Hanji ducked down into the water up to her nose out of instinct. A voice soon followed, screaming across the water, broken and raw. "Isabel! Farlan!"
Hanji's heart squeezed into itself, and her eyes burned as her vision went fuzzy. Big drops of water started to fall from her eyes. Hanji had never cried before. Merpeople were always surrounded by water. They had no concept of tears. In another situation, Hanji would've been fascinated by her body's response. However, in the moment she could only think of the corpses floating next to her. They had names. Isabel. Farlan.
There was more noise, and a figure came into view at the front of the boat, dark-haired with a pale shirt. Hanji was back below the water's surface before she could see the human's face.
She knew that she should leave, but she couldn't. Hanji swam to the side of the boat, hair trailing across the surface, and watched as a pair of hands pulled the bodies—Isabel and Farlan—out of the blood-stained water. She pressed her hands to her mouth, still feeling the strange burning in her eyes.
The minutes passed, and still Hanji didn't leave. Part of her mind told her to go back to warn the pod about the monsters—in fact, she was becoming a target herself, this close to the clouds of blood—but she couldn't. Hanji wasn't sure what she was waiting for, but she needed some kind of final confirmation that she'd done the right thing.
Something appeared on the side of the boat. It was the dark haired figure again. Even this close to the surface, Hanji still couldn't make out a face thinks to the movement of the small waves. They clutched the boat's railing, head hanging down. Hanji drew closer to the surface, wondering if explaining monsters to the human might—
Her tail broke the surface with a splash.
The human's head jerked up, and Hanji saw their body stiffen. She realized that blood was still clinging to her, the waves taking bit by bit off in long, kelp-like strands. It was pooling on the surface. Hanji was sure that the human could see it, and in the next second she realized that they could see her as well as she could see them. What were they going to do?
Hanji bolted through the water right when she heard the angry yell, almost missing the splash of something thrown after her. She didn't look back to see what it was. She didn't slow down at all, Hanji's heart beating so hard her body shook right down to her scales.
But even with the sadness of it all, even with the blood still on her arms, Hanji couldn't help smiling. Her tail was intact. She'd seen live humans. Her parents and her pod had been wrong all along.
The shadows of the shipwrecks surrounding the reef seemed like they were calling out to her. Hanji could feel a new sense of purpose all the way down to her scales. She wouldn't let this moment go to waste. She was going to find out the truth about humans, no matter what her pod thought.
The last bit of blood lifted from her arms, and Hanji heard the rumbling of the human's boat far away. Next time, she promised herself, it would end differently.
