A/N: Jily AU of The Little Mermaid, using pieces of the original plot rather than the disney adaptation.
Long strands of sea weed shivered on her body as she swam downwards, deeper and deeper into the ocean. Locks of blood red hair billowed in the water as she glided through the depths, her pale skin luminous against the shadows. She felt her hand by her sides as she swished her tail, propelling herself forwards and downwards, towards home.
As the dark waves had churned threateningly, the ships side had been gored by the jagged rocks like the horns of an angry bull. The ropes and chains rattled and the sailed buffeted against the storm, and the masts collapsed, exaggerating the damage to the body of the ship. Like a vessel of glass, it cracked and smashed as it sunk, hurling it's passengers into the icy black water below. Those left on board had abandoned ship as the tug of the water below had ripped the boat apart, dragging the bow and the stern in opposite directions and down under the frozen waters.
"Abandon ship!" Prince James shouted to his men as he realised there was no saving them. He only hoped that Peter and the other men he had lowered into the emergency boat made it to shore alive, and that they were able to tell Sirius and Remus of his fate.
He was not one to give up hope however, and was determined to save himself. He headed to the bow of the ship which had risen at an angle as the middle of the ship sunk fast into the tornado of water below. The best chance he had was to avoid the gravity of the sinking ship. He pulled himself up to the head and steadied himself. After finding his balance and hearing a loud crack behind him, he dived in.
"Humans have a much shorter lifespan than merfolks' 300 years, but when mermaids die, they turn to sea foam and cease to exist, while humans have an eternal soul that lives on," her grandmother had once told her. "Humans experience things in a way merfolk can never, we drift and move and see things, but we never feel them. We don't live like humans do."
She had been forced to wait until the day she turned eighteen to venture up to the surface, to see the world. She had obeyed. Her mother's death at the hull of a human ship warned her not to break her father's one rule. So she had waited, and she had dreamed. She had collected trinkets from shipwrecks and ornaments from the ocean floor. She often watched as the two sticks whirred in a circle around her favourite golden trinket, wondering what the rhythmic movements meant.
But then she had turned of age. The visions had become a reality and like a merchild leaving the home for their first swim, every blurry idea of what the human world was like had focused into a beautiful view of the sunset. She visited every day since. As she lay on that rock out at sea which acted as her place between the human world and the ocean, she yearned and she wept. For the land, for people who felt as strongly as she did and for the air.
A whirlpool had been created as the water was displaced by fragments of the ship. Ripples and bubbles erupted violently in the surrounding water until the ship was lost, and nothing but the crashing waves could be seen on the surface of the ocean.
James was surrounded by the black ocean and felt his vision going hazy. The ship had suddenly descended just as he went to jump, he had slipped and ended up crashing into a rock. He felt a searing pain as the salt water stung a deep cut on his head. Bloody idiot, he thought to himself as he attempted to stay conscious. He saw the light of the sky fading above him and frantically moved his arms, trying to stay calm all the while he knew it was a losing game. He was going to drown. But he wasn't going down without a fight.
Lily needed to become a human. She sometimes felt as though she was the only one with a mind or feelings or objections in the palace. She never felt as though she was being challenged by anyone, no one disagreed they simply accepted things.
No one felt any passion for anything.
She adored music but her sisters were simply good at it and sang for their father. She hated being ordered around when she was an adult and was far more mature than any of the other noble born mermaids. While she disobeyed, no one else wanted to feel the rush of adrenaline that came from doing something forbidden and no one wanted to feel the blood rise to their cheeks as they screamed at the top of their lungs in an argument.
While she was a fiery time-bomb waiting to be set off, her sisters were limp and coldblooded in the purest of senses.
She had left her boulder, and the feeling of the cold wind whipping her hair and lashing her skin. The waves had jostled her around, begging her to let go of the rock and of her unhealthy fascination with the shore in front of her. She willed the corals to embrace her in a sharp, pink hug and slice her to ribbons. She willed herself to drown, for the water to fill her lungs like it would a man and for the vice of the sea to drag her to her depths. She imagined it would be a rather peaceful death, floating away from the light through the calm of the ocean. Tragic but peaceful.
As his lungs were squeezed smaller by the pressure, he had choked on the water forcing itself into his mouth. His throat had burned with the trapped air, his final breath before plunging into the black water. His ears were pounding and his heart was hammering fast against his chest. He could only hear his heartbeat and the rumble of the waves that surrounded him.
He could take no more. He had opened his mouth to shout, but all that came out was a torrent of bubbles, his final lifeline gone. He realised he had little time left.
He no longer knew which way was up of down, which way meant death and which way meant safety, so he had just floated. He had felt the cool rush of water flowing through his throat and nose and was relieved. He could no longer hear the rhythm of the ocean and slowly his sight had begun to fail. He had slipped away and was enveloped by the darkness and the cold.
As she wafted through the water, she felt an unfamiliar tug. It wasn't a current and it didn't flow like the boundary between two bodies of water. It was a different tug, it felt more powerful and more destructive.
She swam towards it, being helped by the drag which pulled her closer. She was accelerating now, so she pushed against the force with her tail. A strong heave of her scaled body easily counteracting the stream.
What she saw made her gasp, a choked sob ripped itself from her throat as she watched the scene in front of her. She saw life dimming all around her, humans sinking and gasping for air. They were grappling with the intangible water, and she watched in horror as the life left their eyes.
She had to help.
She swum between bodies, searching for someone who was alive, who she could save. She was met with men who had already inhaled so much water in panic that their souls were already lost.
But then she saw a column of white water shoot downwards from the surface. It was a man, his body causing a froth of white bubbles to erupt around him as he dived. Her heart gave a triumphant leap as she moved towards him from the other end of the ship. She would save him.
His lean figure doing nothing to help him from sinking. As she saw him flailing, she admired his determination. He had to know he had no hope, but he was fighting for his life. Her grandmother must have been correct, no merperson would fight to stay alive like that. They drifted serenely to sleep and dissolved, to remain as sea foam for the rest of eternity.
But this man, all these men actually, had struggled. They felt their lives were worth fighting for, desperate to cling to their experiences and their loved ones. Lily wanted to feel that, the desire to hold on and to survive.
She saw him stop moving and willed herself to move faster, to get to him in time. Approaching she saw he had a darkened face, sunkissed from his time on the high seas. His hair was jet black and shorter than the ponytails mermen kept their locks in, and far more messy. He had a long thin nose, and dark eyebrow which framed his face, and long dark eyelashes.
She moved in front of him and hauled him up, shaking his shoulder to wake him. No, no, no she could not lose another one. She yanked him from underneath one of his arms, propelling them towards the surface as fast as she could. She kept glancing back down at him and felt her last piece of hope fail as the final bubbles left his mouth.
But she couldn't give up hope. He would live. They broke the surface of the water and she felt his body limp against hers. She tipped his head to the side and a spluttering of water came out as he coughed lightly. It wasn't enough, all the water had to leave his lungs but for now, it would do.
She pulled him towards the shore, and beached herself next to him, making sure he was well out of the way of the tide. Thankfully it was moving out to sea. She was on her front and could not sit herself upright. She disregarded that. Instead she lay herself across his upper body and listened for a heart beat.
For excruciating seconds, there was silence…and then, she felt the soft thumping of his heart and almost wept with relief. What was she supposed to do now? His pulse was so soft and uncertain, like a flickering streetlight being overwhelmed by the night.
She turned his head to the side and he coughed up some more sea water filling his lungs, and she wrinkled her nose. That didn't smell nice. Still, when he lay his head back in defeat, a shot of panic coursed through her system.
She dragged her weight up his body, closer to him and grasped his shirt in desperation, wanting to do anything that would save her human. She clenched one hand in the material of his shirt around the neck and yanked it. She slipped her other hand around the back of his head and into his hair, lifting it up slightly. She drew even closer to his face, looking for a small twitch of the muscles in his jaw or the flutter of his eyelids.
"Don't you dare die on me," she whispered, just an inch away from him now.
His eyes shot open and he raised his head suddenly to look at her, smacking foreheads with her accidentally.
"Ow, bugger," he mumbled as though he were waking.
Well, that probably wasn't good for his concussion, she thought to herself as she rubbed her head and watched his eyes glaze over again. She was astounded by the colour of his irises, they were like gold. Like buried treasure, with flecks of brown and even green which matched her own.
She could see his consciousness waning and decided to do the only think she could think of. She kissed him.
She held his face in her hands and leaned forward. His eyes were still closed but she felt his breath mingle with hers just before she pressed her lips to his. His eyes opened in shock and he saw a beautiful girl, with thick eyelashes and white skin. She was a blur of red; her flushed cheeks, red lips and hair all exquisitely beautiful as the sun rose behind her head. She was kissing him. He moved his lips, responding to the gentle brush of hers. She felt his heart speed up to a normal rate underneath her torso and his arms wrap around her waist. Indulging himself, he ran his tongue over her lips and felt her shiver. She tasted like salt water and fresh air, and as he felt her press up against him, she felt like sunshine.
He drew her back, wanting to see her face again and was astonished when she opened her eyes. They were the most vivid green he had ever seen, like sea weed with flecks of turquoise. The salt water had dried, so her dark eyelashes had small white crystals sitting on them, which sparkled in the sun. She seemed ethereal, too good to be true. The way she held his gaze rather than glancing down as girls often did in his presence made him love her even more. He valued a little disobedience, and the wicked smile she gave him made his heart leap.
The smirk he gave her made her tingle, it was lopsided and boyish and she loved it. She liked his face now that it had a flush, he was breathing quickly and he was alive.
But he had seen her, and that wasn't allowed, so she sung him to sleep.
Her voice was hard to describe. It was warm and rich and soulful, but it sang a sorrowful melody and made him want to weep. She knew she was putting him in a trance. It would lead to him thinking her a mirage or a hallucination, but she willed him to remember her. Her siren call poured out of her like a river. Her tone was spine-tingling, and she sung a tune of opposites. It was refreshing like the ocean but sharp like the rocks he had almost drowned on, velvety like the feel of seaweed stroking your feet but every syllable sounded mournful, like how it felt to lose someone.
He could feel himself falling away, but the last thing he was conscious of was brilliant green eyes, berry-coloured hair and his hand on her lower back, on the scales of a vivid green tail.
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