Makoto stayed on the beach all day.
Haru eventually decided to give him room and took himself back up to the cottage, but all the doors and windows remained open so that at any moment, he could glance toward the shore and find Makoto still sitting in the same exact spot on the sand, quiet now that he'd screamed his voice hoarse and had no energy left to do anything other than sit and silently expel more tears.
Haru could see the load on his shoulders, even from a distance, the weight that so heavily pinned him to the ground, and he knew there was nothing he could do about it, but his stomach ached anyway. He saw the exhaustion in the bend of his spine, the limpness in the way that he barely agreed to breathe. Everything that had once been worth doing as much was now gone from his world, and whatever else remained meant nothing to him. And though the sensation of knowing that gutted him like a fish hook through the stomach, he also understood.
In his case, his grandmother had been literally everything that he'd had, and without her, existing had seemed incredibly pointless — until his Makoto came along. So he hoped, that maybe once Makoto had some time to overcome the first wave of grief, he would remember that he had not been left alone. Haru hoped that he would remember he was there, that they were now part of each other, and would somehow know that Haru was more than willing to face all of this with him, to maybe coax him through it the same way he'd guided him back to the water.
Those were two very different things — and he was sure at this point that they were both more than dubious of the sea and its intentions. But assuming that Makoto would only be in pain and anguish for the rest of all days to come was something he could not and did not want to sign himself over to.
It would be hard. Above anyone else he probably knew that the best about grieving, but there was life to be rediscovered down that road, and if it took everything he had in him to help his Makoto get there, then he would do it.
So he started with the things he knew how to do. He made sure that there was warm food to eat, and he did not force Makoto to leave his solitude. He brought nourishment to him when he felt it was necessary, and he did not comment when Makoto continued to stare numbly at the horizon with his knees tucked against his chest and did not acknowledge his presence.
He set the plate down next to him and retreated back to the cottage to watch him from the doorway. Makoto never touched it.
By the time the sun had completely gone and there were nothing but stars to be found in its place, Makoto's eyelids were so heavy and puffed with red, Haru wondered how he managed to still keep them open.
It was surprisingly easy, to take his arm and lift him gently off of the sand, but he moved like there was not a single thought involved. His body was following Haru's touch, but his mind was somewhere else entirely, back in that place that Haru knew he could not reach him, so he didn't worry himself about trying to. He led Makoto back into the cottage and got him out of his sandy clothes to lay him down on the bed. Makoto turned over onto his stomach, burying his face in the pillow, and Haru did not know from there how much he slept. Though, the next morning, his breathing was heavy and even and he was back on his side, gone to the conscious world.
Haru didn't wake him up. It was disheartening to see the mourning still there on his face, even as he slept. It had been so different the morning before, and this was exactly the thing that he had been afraid of — just how quickly all of the peace and happiness had washed out of him. If no one else had known, they'd have taken one look at him and assumed he hadn't slept in years, assumed that all of his days had been nothing but misery.
Haru got up and made more food.
And it was like this for three days.
His Makoto never said a word, and he refused to eat. When he was awake, he sat on the beach — in the same exact spot all day, staring at the horizon, and Haru could not tell what was in his head. He didn't know if the look in his eyes harbored any bitterness, or anger, or fear. He didn't know what this new captivation with the ocean meant. Only weeks ago he'd been afraid to approach it, fainting at the thought of having to board a boat, and now he wouldn't leave the water's side, but Haru was sure it had nothing to do with any refreshed vigor he had for it, which just made the lackluster look in his eyes ominous.
He and the sea were not sharing in any moments of connection; he knew that much. And so he wondered if Makoto was just simply waiting to see the ghosts of his family gliding across the surface of the waves. But that gave him goosebumps.
He was hesitant to go off and do anything that would leave Makoto by himself, so he kept to cooking and swimming close to the shore right in front of him. He hated being in the water, but there was no way to go without it. It was in his DNA to submerge himself as often as he could, and it was a reluctant comfort to be in the sea in his true form, barely jostled by the current, poking his head out of the water every now and then to check that Makoto had not moved.
It made him frown every time, to see him still there and staring out in the distance, not even the smallest bit interested in turning his eyes to Haru. But he also knew it was a fragile place that Makoto was in and any shift could potentially wake him up to a state of mind that he didn't want to be in, thinking about his family and realizing over and over again that they were gone.
Haru didn't disturb him.
At least not until the fourth day came around and he knew he could not let his human go any longer without eating.
"Please," was the first thing that he said to him after days of living in silence. "You have to eat something."
He was sitting with his legs crossed, back to the sea, eyes to Makoto, holding a plate of food in his lap, which he offered over imploringly with his brow already pinched.
Makoto leaned further into his knees and turned his face away, balling himself up against Haru's insistence.
"Makoto," he said, willing his voice to stay even, despite how much it hurt. "You can't starve yourself."
His Makoto did not respond, nor did he move.
Haru took a slow and patient breath, trying to remain calm even though he knew what Makoto was doing. "You survived," he stated, as strongly as he could manage. "That is no fault of yours. It's just something that happened. I'm sorry … that you lost them, but that wasn't a fault of yours either. Stop trying to punish yourself for it. Please eat."
Makoto still did not respond, but his body tensed and a tremble shook him from his shoulders down. His breath hitched and he began to cry, and Haru waited patiently as he did so, staring at the mackerel on the plate.
It took several minutes for him to go quiet again, only sniffing intermittently to break up the weight of the silence.
Haru glanced up at the back of his hair, watching it ripple in the breeze for a moment, counting in his head, before he took a breath to try again.
"Will you eat now?"
"I don't want it," Makoto said, voice hoarse.
Haru frowned and took another breath. "I know you don't. I understand —"
"Don't you dare," Makoto hissed, so suddenly turning a teary-eyed glare on him that his heart stopped beating. "Don't you dare."
He said nothing more than that, and they held each other's gaze for a really long time, until Haru had to drop his shamefully in his lap. He could feel his own shoulders sagging.
He didn't try to reason with Makoto through empathy anymore. But he knew he couldn't just drop it.
"I don't want you to wither away," he said, so quietly that his voice was nearly carried off by the wind. "I can't let you do that to yourself. I'm … crushed by your pain, Makoto. I would do anything to take it away if I could. I would do anything to change this for you, but I'm so useless for something like that. All I can do is make sure you're taken care of, which inculdes making sure that you eat. You can stay out here on the beach all night if you want to. You can go inside and break everything in sight if that will help. You can curse at the sea, curse at me, curse all the gods that you believe in, but you have to eat … Please." He forced himself to meet Makoto's gaze again, and put every drop of desperation he had into it. "Please, Makoto."
Makoto was still glaring at him, and after a tense moment, the smallest of creases bent his brow and he dropped his eyes away, snatching the plate out of Haru's hand. He crossed his legs and kept his head bowed as he shoveled food into his mouth, and Haru could tell he tasted none of it, could tell that each bite was harder and harder to swallow, most especially after he grimaced and started crying again, forcing himself to eat through his tears, wiping his arm across his nose every now and then.
Haru sat beside him in silence.
Another two days went by, and then one night Haru looked up from the sink when Makoto walked through the door on his own. He didn't say anything, but he did stop just inside and turn his eyes up from the floor, meeting Haru's gaze as Haru stood there frozen, waiting for whatever it was his Makoto was going to do.
It turned out to be nothing, and his stare was intensely difficult to read. So Haru didn't know what it meant when that bend came back to his brow and he looked away again, making his way silently into the bedroom where he closed the door behind him.
Haru hovered there unsure for several long minutes following, not knowing how to interpret that or respond to it. It took him a while to decide simply to let it be, and maybe hope that it was some kind of sign of the first wave coming to an end. He couldn't be sure about that, so he remained cautious, but finished cleaning the kitchen and decided to riffle through the notebook that he and his grandmother had written all of their recipes in, contemplating what he should make next that might call his Makoto back into the present even just a little bit.
He smelled the rain before it started. But it also didn't take long for it to start pouring after he looked up to the clouds in the sky. The waves were already unsettled, and it made him instantly heavy with exhaustion. Tired. He was so tired of storms, so tired of rain, so tired of all the trouble they caused.
And he thought of Makoto in the bedroom, wondered if he'd closed the doors to block out the noise. That was probably the reason he'd come inside. He'd seen the clouds rolling in from a distance, and that only made Haru heavier.
By the time the thunder started, he knew he couldn't keep sitting there at the island, so he got up, already full of the itch and anxiety. It was like Makoto's fear had become a part of him, or at least loud enough to his ear that he could feel it, knew that it was there even from the other room, and the pull to be by his side was magnetic, even though he knew Makoto still wanted to be alone.
He would just check on him, just to make sure he still wanted to be in isolation and didn't need Haru.
So he opened the bedroom door and was immediately thrown off by the great gust of wind that whirled through the room, flapping the curtains every which way. He hadn't expected the doors to be wide open to the black of the storm outside, blowing sand across the wood floor. But his shock of that subsided quickly when he looked toward the bed and saw it empty.
He stepped across the threshold, confused, eyes darting around the room as though he was going to find something that clearly wasn't there. The room wasn't that big, and there were no corners to hide in. Makoto was quite clearly not there, and Haru's eyes turned back to the storm, already wide, heart racing.
Lightening lit up the beach, but his human was nowhere in immediate sight, and it took only one crashing wave of realization to send him sprinting toward the sea, shedding his shirt along the way. The familiar ache in his legs was immediate, the moment the rain hit him in the face, but he begged his body through the pounding of his heartbeat not to leave him stranded in the sand.
He'd never tried to stave off the transformation before. He'd never thought that it was possible, but apparently, with enough willpower and terror pumping through his blood, it was a doable thing — just enough so — and he was able to dive into the water before his legs disappeared from underneath him. He writhed across the shallow waters, breaking away from the sand as quickly as he could, and then darted full speed the moment he had enough real estate, eyes skipping around frantically.
He initially saw nothing but the belly of the ocean, and the terror started to rise, trying to strangle him, but then a silver shape beelined toward him from out of the darkness, chirping urgently, and he changed directions in an instant.
"Where is he?!"
They met in the middle only long enough for the bottlenose to zip in one quick circle around him and then take off toward the open ocean, knowing that Haru was right on his tail.
He couldn't remember ever having to swim at full speed — the compulsion to do so had never been there. He knew he was fast, knew he could out swim jet skis and the fastest fish in the sea, but there had never been any urgency in him to do so. At the moment though, he was being run by pure adrenaline and dread, moving as though he was trying to keep up with the piston speed of his pulse.
He passed the bottlenose several times, and had to circle back with frustration, because the dolphin was the only one who knew where they were going. He tried not to be impatient, tried not to get angry, because he was faster by nature and the dolphin was doing his best. But they had to get there and they had to get there now. His human could not breathe underwater, and Haru had no idea how fair of a swimmer he was, though he was more and more alarmed by how long it was taking them to get to him. They were already so far from the shore. There was no way Makoto had gotten this far out on his own — especially not in the middle of a storm.
Even underwater the shifting currents were difficult to cut through, and disturbed sand and bits of broken coral from the ocean floor kept nicking him across the torso and billowing up into his eyes. The storm was far worse off shore, and this did not at all settle the knot in his stomach.
The bottlenose, who had been thus far concentrated on keeping up with Haru, suddenly began calling out with echoing squeaks, and these were responded to by the faintly distant song of the orca. Haru took off toward it, listening as they continued to call back and forth to each other, giving him an invisible line to follow, until the orca finally appeared, swimming in anxious circles far closer to the surface than it might have on any other occasion. He wailed at Haru urgently, and when Haru's eyes darted up, he saw Makoto's legs kicking through the water.
His heart nearly burst, but he didn't have time for that, so he shot straight for the surface and broke through the tumultuous waves only yards from his human.
"Makoto!" he screamed, already interrupted by a sweeping upsurge that nearly crashed on top of him. He ducked under within enough time not to be too badly thrown off by it, but he could only think about how Makoto was in the middle of this.
"Makoto!" he called again, the moment the one wave passed. That wasn't to say there weren't hundreds more that they had to fight through, but he ignored them and didn't allow them to put anymore distance between them.
Makoto, to his brief relief, was not in the midst of drowning. He was, in fact, swimming very determinedly, completely out of breath and Haru knew his strength was exhausted, but he continued forward — on what willpower Haru had no idea, but he was unwavering.
As much as it was his instinct to do so, Haru did not grab onto him the moment he swam up close enough. If he latched onto Makoto's arm, he wouldn't be able to keep himself above the water.
"What are you doing?!" he shouted instead, and still it was barely audible over the howl of the wind, and the roar of the waves, and the boom of the thunder.
"I'm going home!"
Another wave broke down upon them and Haru pushed Makoto down within enough time, but the swirl of the water beneath still pulled them a significant distance apart and Haru had to recollect his surroundings before he spotted him again.
Makoto was already choking on water when he reached him, but he slapped Haru's hand away when he reached out for his shoulder, and just continued swimming. Though, it was clear at this point that he wasn't going to get much farther.
"Makoto, stop!" he begged, swimming in tight circles around him to keep the current from pulling him down.
"You stop!" He was nearly swallowed by a swell, but managed to keep his head above water. He bobbed breathlessly for a moment, but gritted his teeth and pushed forward. "I have to get back to my family! The sea can —"
They were submerged again, tossed and whipped around, but Haru managed to stay close this time, and pushed Makoto back up from underneath.
Makoto was gasping for breath when he resurfaced, struggling. "The sea can have me if it wants to!" he finished. "I don't care!"
"I care! Makoto, this is insane, you can't swim that far!"
"I have to," he said, voice breaking down with exhausted emotion, and Haru saw the steam leaving his limbs. He knew Makoto would fight him if he tried to hold him up, so he kept swimming around him, very aware of the orca and the bottlenose hovering underneath them.
"Makoto, please let me take you back. You'll drown."
"I can't go back," Makoto sobbed, head shaking, only able to tread water at this point. "My mom …" He sucked in a breath and opened his eyes with invigorated determination, trying to swim again. "My dad, my brother, my sister … I'm not just going to keep sitting on that island!"
"Makoto, they're gone. There's nothing you can do for them —"
"I know that!" He faltered again, and they were rocked by more waves.
Haru snatched his wrist before the current could drag him away and pulled him back to the surface, where Makoto sputtered and coughed.
"I know that," he cried. "I have to see them. Just one- … Just one more time."
It was hard. It was so hard to be gentle and sympathetic in this situation. If Makoto could have made it all the way back to Iwatobi through the ocean, then Haru would have let him do it and made a current for him that would get him there. But that was not possible, not like this. Makoto was already sapped of his strength, and the moment he lost that will to keep pushing forward he would drown. And will would not be enough for him. His body was limited and did not belong to the water like that. The harder he fought, the more the storm was going to resist, and the storm would always be stronger.
"We'll take a boat, Makoto," he tried to reason. "First thing in the morning. I'll get you back home, I promise. Let me take you back."
Makoto hit his hand away, panting as he put whatever defiant energy he had left into his body and dragged himself across the surface, doing his best to put distance between them. "I don't need you," he huffed out.
And Haru wanted to be hurt by it. He so wanted to be hurt by it, but he knew he deserved that, and that's the part that got him. But even still, to allow that to convince him to back off and leave Makoto alone would be to sign Makoto over to his death, and that was not a viable option.
"Makoto, I'm sorry."
He snatched him by the waist and started swimming back in the direction they came from, sure that Makoto was secure against him and that his head would stay as above water as it could.
But as he predicted, Makoto fought.
"Stop! Get off of me!"
"We have to go back!"
"No! Let go!"
Where he got the extra boost of strength from, Haru had no idea, but naturally he was stronger than Haru and so was able to rip his arm away and kick at his hip to push himself back.
"Don't —!" He was cut off by another wave, but fought past it to just barely get his fingers around Makoto's shirt. "Makoto!"
It was ridiculous, that they were fighting each other in the middle of the ocean, and Haru was half hopeful that Makoto would just pass out from fatigue so that he could carry him back to land without the fuss, but he didn't do that, and he got away again, shouting for Haru to keep away, and Haru froze where he was, not because of Makoto, but because his eyes had just glanced up and what he saw snatched a petrified gasp out of his throat.
It was massive — too big for words, and he wasn't even looking at all of it. Just a shape, blacker than the deepest trenches and the darkest corners of space, like that of a head and shoulders, but much too large to comprehend as anything remotely human-like. It had no discernable features. It was just a looming shadow — a looming shadow with glowing white eyes, and it froze every inch of blood in Haru's veins, facing it, staring up at it, staggered for far too long, because he had been so sure. He had been so sure that they weren't real.
The water drew back, trapping him and Makoto in a trough so deep that they were surrounded on all sides by nothing but walls of water. The shadow raised an arm, or a tentacle, or whatever it was that reared back slow and menacing, and Haru had only enough time to snap out of his trance and dart in front of Makoto to shield him.
"NO!" he screamed, instinctively throwing his own arm up as the Umibōzu's came crashing down. The wave that surely would have killed them both exploded in half like it had just met the mighty hand of God and parted like the Red Sea, only the whole ocean took the hit and threw them back. He gasped in a lungful of half air, half water, and had no idea which way was up, down, or sideways, had no idea where Makoto was, and could do nothing to fight the swell that trapped him. He was flung backward and just barely caught a glimpse of the orca swimming up out of nowhere with an echoing squeal. It threw its tail up, flinging him in the exact opposite direction, up out of the air on a manufactured wave that crashed down on invisible rocks and pitched him unceremoniously into a hole.
And everything went so suddenly silent.