A slightly edited version of my first MadoMagi fanfiction, which was a KyouSaya request from my good friend Avalon-Asylum. Based off of the original 'The Little Mermaid.' You can read also read it on wattpad; my username is Breaking-Bunnies.
Content warnings: death, a few curse words, a mention of self harm, and a mention of domestic violence.
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In the biggest cabin on the ship, there sleeps the prince and his new princess, and just outside the door is the girl who loves the prince more than anything in the world.
Outside that hallway it is the middle of the night. A blanket of dark satin- adorned with tiny jewels and a single, gleaming broach -lays over the whole world.
Kyouko peels her eyes open-there, again. A soft, hollowthumpoutside the cabin door. She'd set the first one slide as simply some cargo jostling with the rocking of the ship.
But she can hear crying. She can smell blood.
Kyouko throws the covers off of herself, her feet eliciting quiet groans from the floor. Abreast to her, the prince sleeps unperturbed, muttering sweet, empty words about his bride. Kyouko can't help but rolls her eyes as he sighs, "my love..."
Eat your heart out.
Gaslight bounces in a corner of the room. The light doesn't travel far, swinging widely as the lamp knocks against the wall. But it's enough to see by, for her purposes, so she slides it off its peg. She tiptoes to her trunk, pulling the belt straps out as quickly as she can as the scent of blood-metallic, stomach-turning-runs up her nostrils and cloaks the inside of her throat, nearly palpable on her tongue. Beneath her topmost gown is one of her family's prized, crystal crosses, and besides that is her own treasure: an pair of iron knuckledusters, the shard ridges tipped with diamonds. Neither are as cold as she expected them to be, as though they were waiting for her.
She steals to the front of the room, sets the lamp down, and throws the door open.
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("I know what you want," said the pale creature; "it is very stupid of you, but you shall have your way, and it will bring you to sorrow, my pretty princess.")
Everyone but her is always right.
And now here she is, laying on her side like a beaten pup, the walls of her throat constricted and shredded raw, with an ache so deep it should have slit her in two squeezing her heart, traveling down to her chest to sit there, feverishly hot, in the pit of her stomach.
But worse of all of this is the brackish water oozing out her skin.
How could I have been so stupid?
She swallows, realizing she'd spoken her thoughts, and that her voice is thinner than thread. The words (to the princess on the other side of the door) are unintelligible mouse-squeaks.
(And then, when the creature should have laughed, it merely sat back on it haunches and stared up at her with its beady, maroon eyes.)
She had held the knife by its blade not too long ago, to see what would be brought from her flesh- burning, blue-black seawater still leaks from the wound.
The door swings open, a loud bang against the wall. The girl from the cabin wants to cringe-she hadn't meant to throw it that hard-but she buries the urge.
Sayaka lifts her chin; the girl might not be even a full year older than herself. In the modest aura of the gas-lamp, she stands with her feet spread apart like a ready fencer, one arm pulled back. Even in shadows, donned on one side like a coat slung over her shoulder, crimson hair freed and brushing the back of her knees, she has a wild charm to her.
A bigger wave hits the vessel, but this girl, who couldn't have ever been any closer to a boat than a yard, standing on the docks as the king smashed a wine bottle against it-her sea legs, they call it. She could have been born on a ship for how firm her standing is.
(bitch)
(better than you, at least)
Time passes. Scarlet eyes scrutinize the living corpse in front of them. Lips thin into a harsh line, ere she drops onto her scabby knees (for a princess?) and lowers her arm, her hands, Sayaka can now see, circled by spiked hoops. "What are you doing?" she asks.
(For who could ever love a walking carcass?)
Sayaka either lunges for her or tries to embrace her-even she doesn't know anymore. But either way her face ends up buried on the girl's clavicle, sobs wracking her lithe frame with a newfound ferocity.
Kyouko pulls the blue-haired girl's trembling fingers off the hilt of the knife, the tip of which hovers a hairbreadth's from the flesh of her own stomach. A droplet of...water(?) runs down her hip, pelvis, thigh. The knife clatters to the ground betwixt them, where Kyouko slides it off to the side with her foot.
(why is the floor wet?)
Her fingers clamp bruises into the blue-haired girl's shoulders, shaking her, wrenching her chin up and in place."What in the hell do you think you're doing?"
Kyouko swears there are musical notes in the girl's eyes. Her pupils are off-white, floating in the middle of navy, dead pools, and within those swim the notes of a symphony.
A pause.
"You're that girl who-," Kyouko says slowly, then all at once: "You're the prince's cousin." Kyouko has only seen her at a distance: hanging close to the prince, her hands clasped together or hidden, giggling at all his jokes more than mere politeness necessitates.
Kyouko has only ever seen the prince maybe thrice before tonight. He'd mentioned offhandedly that the girl was simply a second or third cousin, but that he'd thought of her as a sister. And he'd seemed genuinely disappointed when his "cousin" was absent from his nuptials.
The girl yanks her chin free, but keeps her head near the other's hands. Her cheek, maybe unbeknownst to her, slides into Kyouko's palm, the underside of a knuckleduster lukewarm against skin. The sob that rattles from somewhere low inside her throat makes Kyouko regret breaking the hug.
When was the last time she herself had cried?
(When was the last time Father had broken a vase, thrown it into a wall suspiciously close to Mother's head?)
"No?" Kyouko asks.
The blue-haired girl sucks air in through her teeth. Her posture stiffens, hands balling into fists by her sides. Her eyes are still ringed with music notes; a hearty violin begins to play somewhere on the ship's deck above them.
"I am a daughter of the sea," she says, inhaling deeply, slowly, as she tuck the strands of hair that have fallen from her bun behind her ear. "I had what you would call a 'soul' ripped out my body and made into a jewel here"-She rests her finger on the white, simple linen covering her navel-"so my fins could become 'legs', and-"
She sighs all the weight of the secret out.
"The spell is not permanent. Unless the prince can love me enough to forget his father and mother for my sake, to love me with his whole soul, and allow the priest to join our hands that we may be man and wife... if not, I'm to die the next sunrise. And my soul will turn into sea foam on the crests of waves, as is the fate of my kind. He probably knew that would happen," she mumbles under her breath. "That...demon will probably eat it."
Kyouko had forgotten that this girl (Sayaka, yes, that's the name)'s cheek is still cupped in her hand, and, unaware to either, her thumb has begun to caress the girl's face, back and forth, back and forth, cheek to chin.
"-but the knife!" Sayaka yelps suddenly, scrambling down on her knees, accidentally knocking out her hairpin, fruitlessly raking back twice as much hair as before. "My sisters came to me not too long ago; they told me they had sold their hair to a sea witch for this knife. If I kill the prince..." Blue eyes look up at red sheepishly. "...and his new wife, I can become a mermaid again."
"Well, to be kurt, I don't think any of the buffoons on this ship could kill a cockroach, much less clean up the brain matter of your's I'd have to splatter on the walls if you tried that. Let us avoid it if we can." Kyouko cracks an unconvincing smile. "The only one who gets to drive a knife through Violin Boy back there is me."
She hops to her left, and the golden, fortissimo hairpin clinks on one of the bed's legs behind her.
"Whoa, Nellie."
"I obviously wasn't going to!" She gives an exasperated huff, but her (lighter blue?) eyne start to move from one glinting knuckleduster to the other. She lifts her eyebrows. "But I do think I could wrestle you down."
Kyouko snorts. She holds her hands up, pleading innocence, rolls her eyes, and tosses a bemused look over her shoulder.
"He has hearing problems; if he's not a participant in a concert, he always has to sit as close to the stage as possible."
Kyouko cocks her head at the girl, stretching her arms back and making her fingers a pillow. She puffs air out of her cheeks before she asks, "How long ago did you (sell you soul?)...become human?"
"Three years ago, I think."
A horrified, realizing expression splashes over Sayaka's face. She springs to her feet, gripping the ledge of the hallway window, pulling herself off the ground.
The ship gives a lurch, but the men on deck clamor for another song.
Splitters jab deep into her skin as the lost mermaid slides down the wall, collapsing in on herself, and begins to cry anew.
Outside, the horizon is graying.
Kyouko steals back to her trunk. Under the topmost gown-her wedding dress-is her favorite thing in the entire world: a leatherback, slightly paint-splattered volume of folklore.
Kyouko returns, saying softly, "Here. Why don't we read some of these together?"
"What are those?"
"Just some old stories-King Arthur and his knights, mostly. Have you heard any of them?"
Sayaka shakes her head, crinkles her nose.
Well, the Lady of Shalott could surely relate to you.
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Her hair smells sweeter than the water dripping out her pores-like a perfumed bath, maybe. The tears around her eyes have dried, but Kyouko can make up for that. Surely it's only fair.
The mermaid rests between her legs, the way Momo sits to hear the selfsame bedtime stories.
Kyouko's silk nightgown is sodden, pages of her book dotted from where Sayaka had smashed her fingertip onto words that reminded her of some of the trinkets she'd possessed once, so long ago, collected from the shores and shipwrecks.
Sayaka leans back into Kyouko's shoulder, her own sagging. Her hand splays over the front cover of the book, where the Sakura family crest is drawn in the color of blood. "Do you love the prince?" she whispers, running the ball of her thumb over the horse's slender horn.
"No."
"Why do you marry him, then?"
"Because my father demanded it of me. He said that Violin Boy's kingdom would be the greatest ally to have in case of war, and my hand in marriage could buy them. But he seems to love me. Do mermaids marry for love?"
"Usually we don't marry at all," Sayaka yawns, her head lolling to the side, resting on the upper part of Kyouko's breast. "Two will stay together for a few years, and then they will simply go and do the whole thing again with another. Until they become sea foam. But you, you humans have eternal souls..."
(Her voice lingers in bliss on those words, and that makes Kyouko want to ask,"How muchdo you love the prince?" though she can't dare herself to.)
The long window, gradually, begins to pour news of the sunrise onto their legs.
When Kyouko stands up again, she is soaked to the very bone, but she spies not a bubble of surf in the puddles around her bare feet.