Disclaimer: I don't own H2O: Just Add Water. Sorry, but last time I checked, my name wasn't Jonathan M. Shiff. And if it was, I'd be making episodes rather than sitting here writing fanfiction. But don't worry, that doesn't mean I don't love you guys! (Especially if you review!)

Chapter 7: Alone in the Dark

Bang. A door closed. Rikki shut her magazine with a snap and dropped it on the carpeted floor carelessly, saying to Cleo: "How can you even read these magazines? They're absolute rubbish."

"Well, you didn't have to read them," Cleo tutted, but she didn't say it spitefully. Her heart wasn't in it to give her words much of any type of emotion. She was too anxious for Emma. Reading the magazines had been to steer the two of them away from negative thoughts. Cleo admitted to herself that it had worked, even if only a little bit. Artificial light from the hallway spilled into the lounge as Lewis walked in, followed by Zane, who came before Ash. The boys were all three soaked through and shivering with cold. Rikki craned her neck to see if there was a fourth figure, but Cleo realised it first. "No Emma," she said, despondent.

"No Emma?" Rikki repeated, snapping her head around to look at Lewis. She felt no sympathy for any of the three boys. Except perhaps Zane. And no, that isn't just because he's my boyfriend, she said to herself. It's because his teeth are chattering so hard it looks like they are going to fall out.

"Where is she?" Rikki demanded of Lewis.

"I don't know," he replied, truthfully.

"She's somewhere in the ocean," Ash added, unhelpfully.

"She's moonstruck," Cleo confirmed. This statement was only a little more helpful than Ash's, in that it at least gathered the thoughts of the group and stopped any further mucking around. At least she thought it would.

"I can't believe you got Emma moonstruck!" Rikki practically screamed at Lewis.

"It was actually her fault she got herself moonstruck. Besides, she's done it before as you should full well remember."

"You really think so?" Name one time she got moonstruck and it was all her fault." Rikki said.

"Well there was the time at her dad's birthday party…"

"That could have happened to any of us," Cleo put in. "None of us knew what the full moon does back then."

"The time the full moon reduced all three of you to hysterics and Ash almost found out your secret…"

"That was mine and Cleo's doing, not Emma's," Rikki hurried to say.

"Okay then, when you got your new powers."

Rikki couldn't resist any opportunity to wind up Lewis. "That was your fault, remember? Yours, and that stupid Korean software of yours."

"Fine," Lewis gave in. "Emma's just too responsible to let herself be moonstruck."

"So what are we going to do about it?" Rikki asked.

"We can't do anything," Zane said. "You've seen the storm out there," he said looking round at everyone.

"You've got to be kidding me," Rikki said looking disbelievingly at her boyfriend. "You're saying that we sit tight here the whole night long, not even trying to do anything to help her?"

"Zane's right in saying that," Lewis acknowledged. "She could be anywhere by now, and obviously Cleo and you," he said nodding his head at Rikki, "can't go look for her."

Cleo had been trying to hold back tears, but now she started sobbing.

"Cleo, don't cry!" Lewis exclaimed, running over to her. "There's nothing we can do for Emma," he said quietly to Cleo.

"I know," Cleo sobbed. "It's just…she's my best friend and for all I know she's on the other side of the world by now!" Cleo bawled. Tears poured relentlessly down her face.

Meanwhile Rikki had been considering the problem and finally started to understand its magnitude. Even if the boys went back out, which they were unlikely to want to do, they wouldn't find Emma, and there was only an infinitesimal chance that Cleo and Rikki herself would be able to locate her, in the immense ocean that was out there.

Oh, except we would end up in the same place as her if we tried looking for her, because we would just get moonstruck too, Rikki reminded herself.

"Okay," she said to Cleo, "this is what's going to happen. We'll stay here all night. Emma will be back by morning, right Lewis?"

She paused to look at Lewis, who nodded dumbly. He had never seen Rikki's mood change so suddenly, from snappy and full of retorts; to businesslike - and - if he was allowed to think it - Emma-like. It wasn't anything like her certainly.

"Are you sure?" Cleo asked, still sniffling, but her tears had ceased at present.

"Probably," Lewis said.

"Definitely," Rikki told her. "For now, we should get some sleep."

Before long, the group were all in their sleeping bags.

Rikki was lying next to Zane. "What happens if Emma's not back by morning?" she asked him.

"I guess we'll go look for her again, we can't just leave her out there," Zane said, thinking about the time when Emma had saved him from drowning. He owed a sort of life debt to her.

"Thank you. It means a lot to me, you know."

"I know," he said.

They fell asleep in each other's embrace.


"Emma will be back by morning, won't she?" Cleo asked Lewis.

"Of course she will, you guys always come back when the moon sets. Emma, well she can look after herself."

"And you can look after me," was Cleo's response as she edged over to Lewis. She snuggled up alongside him, burrowing into his chest and loving the feel of his body against hers.

"You know I'd never let anything happen to you," Lewis replied, kissing the top of her head gently. Cleo turned her head towards Lewis and they shared a long and passionate kiss, like a personification of the storm outside.


Sky and sea were in turmoil. Unbeknownst to the whole world, except for five Australian teenagers, a mermaid soared powerfully beneath the black water, like a golden arrow in flight. The water formed towering waves, which then crashed back down, their echoes lost in the sky's own endless collection of noise, between the pounding rain, booming thunder and ephemeral flashes of lightning.

Alone in the dark. An ashen-faced boy with a similar name. Slowly, slowly he drifted into sleep, dreaming of that mermaid, of what had been, what was happening, and what was to come.