"Whether you are the moon or the sun, I do not know. Either way, you guide me out of the darkness and into the light."
— Ramn Grewal
As the mid-morning light pours through the windows of Rikki's, the scent of café Cubana and fresh fruit wafting through the air, customers crowd and sway to the sound of the band's rehearsal. An array of deep sea trinkets, shells and stones and other assorted debris, is littered on the table of a diver as he examines his findings. Bella is no longer on his mind, Will suddenly realises, and he does not resent her even as he swims through the same waters in which they fell deeply in love. He finds himself looking around the café, searching for its new management, but she is nowhere to be found.
On a cheap sofa behind the closed doors of their office, Rikki tries and fails to focus on the words in front of her, finally conceding defeat as he tightens his grip around her waist. "Don't you have work to do?" she asks.
"It's written to me, too," Zane mumbles into her neck.
She scoffs and holds the postcard to her chest, making sure that he cannot read it, as he plants kiss after kiss in her silvery hair. "I'll give you $500 right now if you can tell me one thing that's on this postcard."
"I just can't help myself," he says, and she feels his smile against her cheek. "You're irresistible."
"And you're disgusting," says Rikki, though a flush creeps up her face. "Emma and Bella seem to be getting on great. They're gonna stay in Ireland a bit longer."
"Mmm." Zane rests his head against hers, hardly paying attention to her words, enjoying the warmth of her skin and the sound of her voice.
"They've met some of Ms. Chatham's old friends." Her narrowed eyes scan down the paragraph, Emma's clear handwriting and Bella's messy script describing the faraway country. "Rose's grandnieces and -nephews."
Zane purses his lips. "Hope they're not as bigoted as the rest of her family," he remarks. "Unless they haven't told them…?"
Her mouth curves into a smile. "Doubt it. When have they ever been good at hiding their relationship?" Rikki flips the postcard around and holds it at eye level. "Check out the photo."
The picture is blurry and pixelated, evidently taken on a mobile phone, but what it lacks in quality it more than compensates for in content. To a stranger they would appear to be an ordinary couple, beaming in delight and photographed from the chest up, wearing matching bikinis and swimming in a moonlit cave. If she squints, however, Rikki can almost make out the fish scales mapping their chests, the history in their eyes, the strange pinkish crystals embedded in the darker rock...
"Sunstone," Zane realises. "So it was in Ireland, too, after all."
"Crazy, right?" she says. Her heart falls all of a sudden as she is overcome with how much she misses her friends. They had grown to be more like sisters to her, and without them around, nothing seems to make sense.
He notices her crestfallen expression, and smoothes her hair away from her eyes, tilting her chin upward. "Hey," he says in a soft voice, "do you ever wonder how the sun pool is going?"
"You mean in the last six months since we took all its water and magical crystal thingie?" Zane nods. "I like to imagine it's ok. It's like if I don't think about it being ruined, it can't hurt me. Does that make sense?"
Zane smirks. "Schrodinger's sun pool?" he offers, and she smiles sadly, wringing her hands together. "Do you wanna go check it out?"
"What, now?" she says brusquely.
He shrugs and wonders if his attempts to be nonchalant are working. "Why not? Don't you wanna know the truth?"
"Not while we're working, I don't," Rikki answers without missing a beat.
"Emma would be so proud of you." He searches her face for any sign that she might know, that one of the girls let something slip or that her mind, faster and sharper than his, has caught up. He knows he is getting ahead of himself, though, and his first priority is to convince her to visit the sun pool. "It would only take an hour at most. If anyone asks, we'll tell them it's our lunch break."
She tries to school her features, but is unable to stop the smirk tugging at the edges of her lips. "Don't joke about lunch," she warns.
"Noted," he chuckles and weaves his fingers through hers. "You coming or not?"
Her eyes fall to her mobile as it charges in the corner of the room. "You go, I've a few things to do here first." Rikki rises to her feet, and he stands, too, that strange, scrutinising look still playing in his dark eyes. "I'll meet you out there."
"Giving me a head start?" Zane asks. "That's hardly fair."
They share a chaste kiss before he turns to leave. "Trust me," she calls, "you'll need it!"
Rikki reclines in the leather chair, scrolling down the computer screen and cradling her phone between her cheek and shoulder. The café's email is overflowing with messages, business jargon that she is slowly but surely growing accustomed to, reputable advertisers and budding musicians, suppliers and wholesalers all vying for their attention. As a grumbled greeting sounds in her ear, she grins and sends a hasty reply.
"Uh oh," she says. "Someone got out on the wrong side of the bed this morning."
She can sense the other mermaid's exhaustion, even from the other end of the phone, half a dozen continents away. "Do you have any idea what time it is?" Cleo asks through a yawn.
"Yeah, I was never really good with the whole 'numbers' thing," Rikki replies. "Good thing we get to use calculators at the cafe."
Cleo perks up somewhat at the sound of her friend's voice. "How is that famous café?"
She lets her eyes wander down the screen in front of her; 4,387 unread messages are in their inbox, Rikki realises with a satisfied smile. "Business is good the past while," she says. "Nate's performing every other night. Did I tell you he's getting singing lessons?"
"I'd pay good money to see that."
"He's actually not half bad," admits Rikki. "Whenever he flirts with the audience they take it as a joke, so he's like a singer and a comedian in one."
Cleo snorts in amusement. "You're definitely getting your money's worth. How's Zane?"
Dumb, cocky, arrogant; funny, thoughtful, understanding, trustworthy; different yet the same all at once. None of which she could ever tell Cleo, of course, so she settles instead for, "Working his tail off, same as me. Sometimes we crash here trying to get things done."
"Sounds exhausting," Cleo says.
"But totally worth it." Rikki closes the page in front of her to gaze out the window. "Enough about me, how's the Institute?"
"I love it," she answers, and Rikki can hear the smile in her voice. "But you know that already."
A laugh shakes her chest as a memory comes to mind. "I'll never get tired of that story about the professor and the fish scale samples," she giggles.
Cleo grins. "I'm really starting to fit in here. I get along really well with my roommate, and hiding from water hasn't been as hard as I imagined."
"That's great! And you were gonna tell people you had an allergy," she adds as an afterthought. Rikki remembers how anxious she was upon receiving her acceptance letter but, with a little healthy encouragement from her friends —- and a reminder from Lewis that an allergic reaction to water was physiologically impossible, that anyone else studying marine biology with them would surely know that —- Cleo was more than prepared to attend university while keeping her mermaid identity a secret.
"Lewis has been a huge help, too, especially with studying. Some of the course material is so hard I feel like putting my head through a wall," says Cleo.
Her smile grows wider. "I never thought I'd see the day that Cleo Sertori would be freaking out over study, while Emma flits around Ireland with her girlfriend," she says.
"I miss them," Cleo answers. "I miss you, too."
Rikki sighs heavily. "I know. It's not the same around here without you and Lewis attached to each others' tonsils."
"We'll be home again in a couple of months to gross you out to your heart's content," she assures her, but the humour is lost by the cheerlessness in her voice, and the joke falls flat.
Her eyes fall to the corner of the computer screen. "Shoot," Rikki says as she reads the time. She did not wish to end this conversation on such a sad note, but the minutes have ran away from her, and it is suddenly time to face the music. "I have to go. I'm meeting Zane at Mako to check out the sun pool."
"The sun pool?" she echoes. "Is it still…?"
"We don't know if the caves are still magic," she confirms. "We're gonna go check 'em out."
"Good luck!" Cleo sings. "Let me know as soon as you know anything, alright?"
"Sure," she says with a nod. "Later, Cleo."
"Bye."
She breaches the surface, the water giving way to fresh air that fills her lungs as the sun beats down on the crown of her head. Giving a precautionary glance around the island to make sure that no one has spotted her, she sees his Zodiac at the corner of her eye, and lets her gaze rest on him as he stands on the white sands with his arms crossed. Her fear of being caught dissipates, and she swims toward him at breakneck speed, marveling at her own dumb sentimentality as she longs to be near him again.
"You're late!"
"Yeah yeah," Rikki calls, "tell it to all the other times I've beaten you here."
Zane helps her from the shore and onto the sand, her tail heavy enough to weigh her down as they reach dry ground. As she extends a hand in front of her, curling her fingers into a fist to dry herself off, she can't help but notice how strange he acts. There is something off about him, the way his eyes seem to scour their surroundings as he taps his foot impatiently, but Rikki merely shakes her head and decides that he must have their secret on his mind.
"You ready?" he asks in a puzzling tone, helping her to her feet as she stands on a pair of legs once more.
"Ready as I'll ever be."
She recalls the brevity of the situation all of a sudden, as he takes her hand in his, an uneasy silence falling over them as they walk. The sun pool had always held a special place in Rikki's heart. While the moon pool belonged to she and her friends, somewhere they shared and laughed and grew to become like sisters to one another, the sun pool was different. It was she and Zane's place, free from the judgement and preconceptions of others, the disapproving looks of people who thought they could possibly understand what they go through together. It was a place of solace and understanding and love, and in the end, it had brought them together and helped to restore its sister pool on the other side of Mako. Without it, Rikki muses, who knows what would have happened, to her or to Zane or to the magic on the island?
The past half-year without it had been challenging. It seemed easier, really, to hope that the sun pool retained its magical energy than to be any the wiser. Things were more simple if she threw herself into work at the café and pretended that their place had survived. Now, as he rubs smooth circles in the back of her hand, she takes a shaky breath and silently prays that, like the moon's eternal push and pull of the tides or the change that occurred between two separate suns, the sun pool's magic could somehow be restored.
"No way."
His soft voice pulls her out of her reverie. She hadn't even noticed, too caught up in her daydreams, that they had reached the stream as she remained deep in thought. Backing away from the water instinctively, she turns to look at him, a disbelieving smile on his face as an excited flush colours his cheeks. They run, their hearts hammering as one, until they reach the outcropping of rock that bends over the water. As the stream runs into the natural bridge, it does not stop, flowing beneath the bend and filling the cave with blinding light.
She cannot help herself; she dives into the water and reaches its deepest point in half a heartbeat. Swimming to the bottom of the sun pool, she traces her fingers around the indentation left there, a perfect circle surrounded by six points. With a grin, Rikki breaks the surface once more.
"The sun is still there!" she splutters through a noseful of water.
With a chuckle, Zane shakes his head. "Of course it is."
For the first time in sixth months, she drinks in her view of the caves. They are lit golden as the sun though its mere indentation lies at the bottom of the pool. Her breath catches in her throat as she squints at the rock walls, for embedded in the stone are microscopic pieces of crystal, each one glowing brightly in shades of warm gold like honey dipped in candlelight.
"The sunstone," she says breathlessly, pulling herself onto one of the rocks by his side. "I can't believe this."
Zane is nonplussed as he faces her, radiating warmth, the sunlight falling into his eyes and turning them gold. "I can," he murmurs, brushing her damp hair away from her face. Her heart stammers and picks up again twice as fast, so she turns to her tail and focuses the heat there instead, until she is able to feel her legs again.
In the hour that races by, they talk and laugh together, revelling in the joy of being in the sun pool again. She tells him of Cleo, her love for the new life she made half a world away, and he teases her for her envy. Of course, she denies any ill will towards her friend; how could Rikki possibly be jealous, when everything she wants is right here? Zane had made small talk with Will back at the café before leaving for Mako. He seemed better, he says, diving and dating again as his sister returned to college. Will works every other day and wonders what the next chapter of his life will entail, says Zane, before he remembers why he brought Rikki here in the first place.
"Hey," he says, "I have something for you."
She narrows her eyes as he produces a small white envelope from his back pocket. "What's this?" Rikki asks with apprehension as she turns the paper around in her hands.
"Open it and see."
A beat, and then, "Zane…" she tries to hand its contents back to him. "I can't accept this."
"Sure you can!" he insists.
"I don't take charity, remember?" she reminds him, but he merely he pushes the envelope back towards her, a knowing smile lighting up his face.
"They're paid for with the takings from the café. Partially," he admits sheepishly.
She lets out a sigh. "I was wondering where all the money went."
Rikki scans the two small pieces of paper in her hands, the letters and numbers blurring behind a mist of happy tears. It is too tempting. The dull thudding pain in her heart, the aching loneliness, the sheer annoyance of being apart from her sisters could all be over soon.
She could be on a plane to Ireland just a week from today.
Zane breathes her name and leans toward her, gently beckoning her to face him, her red-rimmed eyes wide with anticipation. As he wipes a tear from her cheek, he knows in his heart that there is nothing he would not do for this girl, even if that means letting her throw away this opportunity for her own stubbornity. "Nothing else is organised yet, accommodation or Visas or anything. If you don't wanna go, say the word and I'll rip the tickets to shreds." His smile grows softer as she returns it back to him. "But I really think Bella and Emma could do with a visit."
She sees the four of them, three golden tails and one pair of legs, in a wintry pool with pieces of sun in the cave walls. "What about the café?" Rikki asks, desperate to find an excuse, any excuse, to retain her pride.
"My dad hired some of his snobbiest recruits to take over while we're away," he says, and the worst part of him glows with a sense of achievement when he realises that he remembered everything. There is simply no way for her avoid this. "And I know Nate is pretty handy with a blender…"
"Zane!"
"Kidding," he laughs.
With a shake of her head she turns to the tickets once more and studies them keenly. "This is…" There are no words that could possibly describe how much this means to Rikki, not for wont of trying. "...too much."
"It's not half enough," Zane argues, contrary as always. "I was thinking we could go around Europe for a bit, take a gondola ride in Venice, see the baths in Budapest, maybe even take a trip to the States, see the Institute…" Rikki's eyes widen in alarm at his musings. "A month or two, tops," he adds, and her heart rate calms.
"Are we crazy?" she breathes. He opens his mouth, but she intercepts before he can utter a word. "If you say crazy in love I will burn you to a crisp. No lie."
"I was gonna say crazy for each other," he says, "but I like your version better."
Her face contorts in faux-disgust, and she rests her head against his shoulder. "You are... all kinds of gross."
"What can I say?" Zane pulls her closer to him, running his fingers through his hair, the smell of sun and seawater assaulting his senses. "You bring out the worst in me."
He waits expectantly; it is a long time before she finally concedes.
"A few weeks, tops," she says, her words a surrender and a victory wrapped into one, a daydream that becomes a reality. "And if our business falls apart I'm holding you personally
responsible."
He beams. "Thank you."
"What are you thanking me for?" asks Rikki.
Shrugging noncommittally, he lets his smile fall as he faces her. "For agreeing to my... arguably injudicious plan," he says.
The words have left her mouth before she can register them. "I miss my friends, Zane," she blurts out.
"I know you do," says Zane. "The girls are like your family. It's not easy spending time apart."
Rikki leans into his chest, hears his heartbeat, a constant and a comforting reassurance. "It's like they're a part of me. Without them I feel like I'm missing an arm or a leg…" She trails off and lets the dull, heavy sound fill her ears.
"I know how that feels." She perks up just a little at the compliment. "Seven days and you'll get to see two of your sisters again."
Rikki looks from him, to the plane tickets, and back again. There is suddenly a solstice in his eyes. She imagines a different life, dirt poor, living in a cheap trailer, barely scraping by with half a dozen jobs between them. He is there, with her. Of course he is.
"I love you so much," she tells him, and there is forever in her voice, a hundred lifetimes, a thousand worlds, a million different realities, all with the boy who took the spark plug and set her heart on fire.
"I love you, too."
a/n: ta-da! thats all folks. do i have any words to express how overwhelmed i am at the reviews, follows, favourites, views, feedback, support and love ive received from all of you since i started writing? not even a little. but hey, as the great dido once said, "thank you." from the bottom of my heart *sparkly heart emoji*
we are literally far too fluffy and busy pumping endless amount of cheese into this story to worry about practicalities like, ya know, work being done in the café or how long it takes to sort out visas to another country. i hope you guys enjoyed this final installment and will's sort-of cameo anyway !
now some headcanons that no one asked for. ofc bella and emma would eventually come home, with bella pursuing her music career while emma studies to be a doctor (i always wondered what she would do until i read in a fic that being a doctor was her childhood dream and. thats basically canon). i can totally see them being gay hippies and getting into environmental rights and such in their elder days. cleo and lewis would go on to become huge names in their fields, work and collaborate together, eventually settling down to have tons of babies/be adorable. as for zane and rikki, its kind of hard to tell. i can really see zane using his father's leverage to go into politics and fight for good causes, while a big part of me sees rikki eventually pursuing a rosa diaz-esque career as a detective. she just has such a firm sense of justice, but then i dont think anything could match just being a mermaid to her. all i know is they would totally stay together and be giant cheeseballs. have you guys got any thoughts?
big big big shout out to fiesa for leaving glowing reviews time and time again, you should totally check out their genius h2o works when you get the chance/want to cry/laugh/otherwise emote/fall in love with the series all over again. so many thanks to every single one of you! i love you so so much and this aint the last youll see of me, promise !
A xxxx
