I've had this sitting unfinished in my fic folder for an entire year because the idea hit me soon after I finished the series and I was too damn sad to get the words out. The arrival of ZnT anniversary week, and the discovery of Madeon's Innocence (which I looped while writing), helped me blaze through it over the weekend.
Title from Became the Sea by Owl City.
Lisa never used to remember her dreams.
She remembers a lot of them, now. After everything.
(In the first few days, when she was able to sleep, she didn't dream at all. Dreams surfaced slowly as time passed, as sleep resumed some kind of healthy pattern. After a few weeks she would awaken with a vague feeling something had happened in her mind during the night, emotions flooding and receding, but it didn't stay beyond getting out of bed.)
Exactly a month After, her dreams begin repeating, variations on a theme: she drowns.
Her classmates push her into the pool, and she lets them without complaint.
Her classmates push her into the pool, and Hisami Touji is not there to save her.
Her classmates push her into the pool, and Nine and Twelve watch as she falls.
(Once Nine and Twelve appeared, she started to dread and anticipate her dreams equally.)
Her classmates push her into the pool, and this time she swims, struggles all the way to the end of the pool where the boys wait, watching. The pool wall is there, but she can't reach it. They are right there but won't reach for her. Her body gives out and she goes under; she comes up for a final gasp just as Twelve says, "Why do you always rely on us?" and Nine says, "You're useless."
(Lisa never used to wake up crying, either. But that dream woke her with tears streaming down her cheeks.)
Other dreams mix in, blurry scenes and muffled sounds that make perfect sense in the seconds after waking, then turn back into incoherence. The drowning dreams are the only ones that are clear, and after the one where the boys speak to her, sensations accompany her each time—muscles working, eyes stinging, lungs burning. She awakens with a deep gasp, tangled in the bedsheets, coughing out water that isn't there.
Yet she sleeps, glimpses of them enough despite their cruelty.
Three months After, the dreams shift to the ocean. Endlessly falling into the dark blue, the sunlight above blinding. She is terrified to her bones, but can to nothing except sink. Something is below her that she does not want to know, a creature of the sea that will consume her very atoms. She can no longer hold her breath; she lets the salt water fill her lungs and prays she will die before reaching the bottom.
The water fills her lungs, but she can breathe through it. She inhales, over and over. She is no longer falling, instead treading water underwater. Spears of sunlight pierce the water, surrounding her, and all at once she knows the menace below is gone.
It's the that the burn chokes her again. She morphs into panic, fighting, flailing wildly.
A hand reaches into the depths, takes hold of hers, and pulls her up.
"I'm here, Lisa."
Twelve. The realization hits her as she bursts into the sunlit air. Her Twelve, not the one who looked down on her in the pool.
She wakes up smiling, cheeks wet.
She isn't afraid anymore, after that.
Every night thereafter she spends in the ocean, floating, breathing, swimming as if she lives there. The ocean is not empty; she follows schools of fish, befriends a turtle. She traverses the currents that shift from warm to cold.
She doesn't break the surface, not even when a distant voice calls her.
In subsequent nights, the voice grows closer and clearer. She doesn't chase it, instead letting it come to her.
When she does, Twelve comes back, bringing Nine with him. He collides into her, spinning her in circles until they're both dizzy. "We've missed you," he says once they twirl to a stop, holding her close. He's brought the surface sunlight with him in his smile.
Nine gives them space, staying within her arm's reach. Even he is smiling, a small one.
Six months After, she sleeps well.
Each night she swims with them, talking with them about everything and anything, words that disappear upon waking but stay in her heart. Together they explore the ocean, sometimes full of life, other times empty, a vast space of calm and peace that is theirs and no one else's.
A year After, to the day, she drowns alone in the ocean without fear that night. The next night, the boys ask her where she went.
"Nowhere," she responds. "I've been here the whole time."
The way they look at her makes uncertainty fizz in her chest.
"Lisa, you should come with us," Twelve says.
"It's time," Nine says.
I can't, don't you see? I need to stay here, to remember you, but the words just echo in her mind and they've taken her hands, and they're pulling her to the surface—
And she wakes.
And the spectacle that greets her eyes takes her breath away.
Her room is alight and adrift with hundreds of feathers, black and gray and white, glowing gently in the morning light. The bedsheets are buried; feathers fall from her hair as she gets out of bed; she slips on them under her feet as she goes to the window and throws it open, leaning over the sill, tilting her head to the sky.
Thousands more are above her drifting and floating. Her head is spinning, so full of astonishment she's almost forgotten how to breathe. She opens her mouth for air-
"Twelve! Nine!"
She calls for them, at the top of her lungs, two times, three. She is laughing, covered in feathers, joyous energy filling her to the brim.
She clambers onto the windowsill, teetering yet unafraid. In the far distance she hears her name in Twelve's voice.
"Wait for me," she shouts, and then she leaps.
#####
She awakens on her bedroom floor.
Her legs are caught up in the sheets. Her shoulder hurts. Frantically, she disentangles herself. Her heart pounds as she pats herself down, as her eyes scan the room. No feathers, no broken bones. She pinches herself hard and hisses; a dream. That was all it was.
A sob claws its way out of her throat. Another. She screws her eyes shut and holds her breath, counts to ten, exhales carefully.
She stays against her bedside, eyes closed, and thinks back to the ocean. She thinks of safety, of serenity, of them. Her breathing evens; the rising tide subsides.
She opens her eyes.
"I miss you," she says into the room. "You aren't here, and you should be. But... you're not gone."
Her beating heart can attest to that.
A glint catches her eye, and draws her gaze downward. Her breathing stutters.
Two feathers rest by her hip, one black, one gray, both full and sleek. Gently, reverently, she takes one in each hand, brushing her fingers over them. They are soft. They are warm.
They are real.
She presses them to her mouth and smiles.