#murderfish au

[swan-archive]

I lived and died like an animal. If death by arrow, death by feather, death by sweet spot. Heel; rise, red dog. I see now what you’ve been sniffing: wings. What you’ve been licking: all those bright, bright teeth. You said, Angel. I said, Anchor dragging this body. The way the sea is the vein is. The doctors advise, Too late now; you’ve got to live with it in you.

Beth Bachmann, “Arrow”

[swan-archive]

I loved the last Murderfish ficlet! MerJohn seems more inhuman than Alex, actually. That must have been a bit weird for Alex in the beginning, I bet, but maybe it was nice to be able to push away the struggle to be more human for John's sake. Are the Murderfishes happy together?

sure, they’re happy. why wouldn’t they be? they’ve got everything they need, they’ve got prey—

(hunting in schools isn’t normal for mermaids their age, but they do it anyhow, out of convenience or nostalgia or something, and Alex has to admit, it is easier to bring down large prey with two of them. a human on horseback, for instance, riding along at the edge of the river, the brass buttons on his worn blue coat flashing bright bright down into the water like minnows flickering through a sunbeam.)

(animals don’t react to Compulsion the same way humans do, but they’re thinking creatures and if you use a gentle touch they can be pushed into mistakes, into veering off the road and down to the riverbank, into bucking with fear and losing footing and tumbling down into the water. and that way there’s plenty of meat for both of them. they still squabble over the choicest bits of their human prey, though. maybe once upon a time John would’ve tried to be the gentleman, offered Alex the heart and taken second pick for himself, but not anymore. what are manners to a mermaid? it’s eat or be eaten down here.)

(Alex and John divvy up their kill and tear in like starved men. the scraps of their victim’s uniform bob up to the surface or tumble away in the current, blue and buff and brass.)

—they have a safe place to sleep—

(they’ve the freedom of the rivers, the freedom of the coastline, probably the freedom of the whole American seaboard if they wanted it. the river-folk avoid them. the other mermaids avoid them. no one wants to tangle with someone who’s been touched by a seawitch as powerful as the one they treated with.)

(we could go up to New York, Alex suggests. visit Herc and Beth. or to Virginia, and bug the General. or to Philly. see what your ridiculous Congress has gotten itself into now it’s not playing at war anymore.)

(why’d we wanna do that?)

(because—it’s—they’re our friends. it’d be funny. it’d be something to do.)

(John blinks at him. no expression on his face.)

(…and maybe it’d be good to hunt somewhere else for a bit? so people don’t get too wise to us. change things up.)

(they’re not getting wise to us, says John. we can still sing, can’t we? we can still bite. plenty to eat around here. why bother making things harder for ourselves?)

(i—yeah. sure.)

(and they’re not really my Congress anymore, anyway. what’s it matter to me what they do?)

(i guess it doesn’t matter, really. not to us. not anymore.)

(they wander down into Charleston harbor. Alex swims up to the surface one night and watches the lights of the city shimmer out over the water. thinks about the state’s Congress, about the nationbuilding going on here, there, everywhere.)

(human stuff, right. not important. not important at all.)

—and most importantly, they have each other. and shouldn’t that be enough for anyone?

(sometimes Alex wakes up in whatever nook in the riverbed they’ve tucked themselves into, pushes himself up and looks at John’s sleeping face. doesn’t touch—that’d be a good way to lose a finger, now. John shifts in his sleep and mutters something that’s either a language Alex never got around to learning from him, or utter gibberish.)

(maybe if he’s feeling bold, Alex will dare to reach out and lay a hand on John’s arm. smooth sleek scales under Alex’s hand, pale gold-green speckled with vivid blue, cool as the water rushing past them. mass of dark hair falling down almost to his waist now—a bitch and a half to groom, when they haul out, but oh, how lovely it is, floating in a cloud about his face underwater or dried into a jungle of curls in the sunlight. the gentle pulse of his gills as he breathes.)

(they’re lucky. Alex knows they’re lucky. John shouldn’t even be alive, by rights. but here he is, hale and hearty and more beautiful than Alex could have dreamed. Alex’s equal at last, nothing about him whispering food or prey or sweet hot blood. a proper mate. when they get around to it, John’ll give Alex a fine clutch, Alex is sure of it. and won’t that be nice? Alex has always wanted to lay.)

(lucky, lucky, lucky. Alex lays himself down again, fits himself against the curve of John’s tail.)

(but he used to be so warm.)

[swan-archive]

Because of all the fun he had messing with the British retreat across Sandy Hook Bay back to NYC, Alexfish doesn't REALLY mind when Lafbird and his amazing organizational abilities get most of the credit for mitigating the disaster that is the Battle of Monmouth. Lafbird nevertheless feels compelled to make sure everyone knows exactly how many Redcoats Alex drowned and how hard it is to take on a force of that size by yourself. Alex is touched but maybe also kind of mortified.

would also be thrilled to hear anything on the subject of alexfish and lafbird as military buddies

okay so first of all: itsbeen84years.gif

second of all: i uuuhhhhhhh didn’t really. fill that prompt. at all. yikes.

with all that on the table, enjoy some Wash and Aegisfish!

George takes a deep breath in, lets it out slowly. Does it again. Does it one more time, on the off chance that it will soothe his roiling temper. No dice.

“You were meant to lie low and gather information on the British troops’ movements. That was all I asked you to do,” he says, in a voice already losing its even keel.

“And I did. The British are demoralized—more so after mysteriously losing ships and troops on what should’ve been a routine crossing back into New York. There’s some intel for you. You’re welcome.” Alexander smirks a bit at his own sarcasm.

“You must have a very low opinion of me, if you really think I’m going to fall for that. Or else you must have even less understanding of the ways of war than I suspected.” It’s a low blow, and George knows it; the grin falls off of Alex’s face and he tenses up so quickly George thinks for a second he’s going to throw a punch. His lips curl back in outrage over a sudden mouthful of shark teeth.

“I knew what I was doing,” Alex snarls, “I’m not just a dumb animal!”

“You disobeyed my orders, you put yourself at risk, you could invite a counterattack while our troops are still recovering,” George interrupts, his voice rising, “and for what? A few scuttled ships? Even you must see that’s a poor trade-off.”

“So what was I supposed to do? Just sit there in the harbor, doing nothing, and wait for you to say oh, come on back, Alex, come see what the damage is? Tell me what, exactly, the point of having a mermaid on your side is if you don’t let that mermaid do what he’s meant to do in the first place!”

“I gave you a job so you wouldn’t have to do that anymore,” George grits out.

“Right. Right. A ‘job.’” Alex air-quotes viciously on that last word, and George is going to have a very serious talk with whoever taught him that one. “Don’t insult me. As if there were anywhere else the British would retreat to but New York. As if I’d’ve been any use to you if they’d won, and carried on inland.”

Which is true, of course. Damn it all. In retrospect, George had been far too eager to send Alex off on the eve of battle; even a mermaid without the benefit of Alex’s brilliant mind couldn’t have missed the air of this is to keep you safe, this is to keep you out of the fight in his command.

Or, as long as George is being honest with himself: this is to keep you from killing again.

Alex isn’t finished. “How long are you expecting me to play at being your errand boy? You know I’m more use to you when I’m hunting, why won’t you just let me—”

“Watch your tone, Alexander,” George barks, before this can go any further. “I am your commanding officer, and I will not be spoken to in this manner.”

Alex laughs, a high unhinged sound very far from anything George could conceive of as human. “So, wait, first I was your little exception with a nice cushy vantage point far from the fight, now I’m a soldier who has to salute and stand up straight and mind his tongue? Either I’m your pet, or I’m your monster. You can’t have it both ways, sir.”

And this is how George knows he is not a good man: a good man would forgive Alex his presumption, his full-on insubordination, because of course he doesn’t know any better than to snap and snarl when prodded. At the very least, a good man would pity him for how far he’s drifted away from who he ought to be. All George can muster up at the moment is weariness, and a faint, disgusted sorrow at the blotchy green flush rising on Alex’s cheeks, the color of a waterlogged corpse.

All right, so he can’t swing unconditional acceptance right now. He can at least try for patience, and fake the rest until he can manage it for real. Alexander deserves that much from him, at the very least.

“You are neither,” he says, as gently as he can. “But you are my son, and I would have you safe.”

Alex reels back like he’s been struck. Cold fury in his eyes.

“You—” he forces out, his voice warped with rage. “You don’t get to—not now, not like this—how dare you—I am not—”

“Your Excellency, sir, have you heard the—oh. Um. I am interrupting, I think.”

Alex and George both whip around. Lafayette is standing there in the doorway of the tent with his head cocked to one side like a robin after a worm. Perfect. A witness to this debacle. George kneads his forehead, but beckons Lafayette inside with a lot more patience than he feels. Alex splutters, wrong-footed.

“What are you do—! Don’t let him in, get out, you stupid buzzard, can’t you see you’re not wanted here?”

“On the contrary,” says George evenly, “the Marquis is always welcome to share his intelligences with me. I find his insights most valuable.” And oh boy, is he going to regret saying that, because Lafayette has swelled up so much with delight that you could almost see the way his feathers fluff under his human guise. He’ll…deal with that later. “And if you’ve more to add to our, ah, discussion, I’m sure he will keep anything you say in perfect confidence.” Not to mention that maybe the presence of a third party will cool both their tempers.

“…He’s not even a real Marquis,” Alex mutters. Which is true, but George shoots him a look anyway.

Alex clamps his mouth shut, fuming, and George takes the opportunity to consider both of them: Lafayette, perfectly normal-looking if not for his wide-eyed stare and unnatural stillness, and Alexander, scratching mulishly at a patch of scales that have sprung up at his hairline. Even George, who knows that Alex is the more human of the two, technically, would have a hard time arguing that fact in front of anyone else. Perhaps it’s a matter of nature. Birds and fish are both alien to an earthbound human, but at least birds have warm blood. A point of commonality, if a tenuous one.

It would have been easier if it had been Lafayette, if you had to have a son who was half a monster… George quashes that train of thought before it can get any further. He has already lost quite enough of his composure to be getting along with. No point in dwelling on impossibilities.

“Well?” he says to Lafayette, a little more sharply than he’d meant to. “What news?” Lafayette looks somewhat embarrassed.

“Simply—ah—I’d meant to see if you’d heard that Alexander was back in camp. Clearly you have,” Lafayette says with an awkward gesture at Alex. Well, there goes the valuable insights angle. Alex makes a great show of rolling his eyes, and George only just manages to avoid doing the same.

“Yes, thank you, Marquis, I am aware.”

“So you’ve already heard, no doubt, of his great victory over the British fleet!” Lafayette smiles widely, in that way he has that looks just a little too far south of human for comfort. “Truly a master stroke, I’ve never heard of one mermaid doing all that by itself.”

“Obviously you don’t know much about mermaids,” Alex grumbles, but a hint of that smug grin from earlier is back.

“It’s true, though! To sink that many ships on your own, I would think you’d need to be a witch to do it. You really didn’t have any help? I know there are, well, not mermaids, exactly, but the river-folk of this country—”

“What do I look like, a hatchling? I don’t need a school to help me do my job.” Alex isn’t looking at George in a deliberate sort of way. Daring him to object to those words, hatchling, school. “All you have to do is figure out who’s in charge, get them locked down, and once you’ve got them, you’ve got the whole operation, more or less. Hey, ram that other ship, that sounds like a good idea, or ooh, that ship over there looks like an enemy, better fire on it, or whatever you like.”

His tone is light, mocking, but with an illustrative thread of Compulsion in it that makes George’s hands twitch involuntarily. Sudden image of a ship’s deck underfoot, a cannon in front of him. “Alex,” he warns.

Alex glances at him, glances away. “Anyway. That’s how it was. I didn’t need anyone’s help,” he says. The ringing silvery overtones have gone out of his voice.

“You’ve gotten much stronger since New York,” says Lafayette approvingly. “I remember when it was all you could do to keep one or two men under your power. These are complicated commands you are giving your sailors now. Very impressive.”

“Well, I was in the water,” says Alex with a modest little bob of the head. “Easier when I don’t have to worry about losing my legs halfway through.”

“I’m sure of it. Easier to make off with your pick of the casualties too, I imagine! You must have gotten more than enough to satisfy, that night. And I know what the appetites of your folk are like, so…”

Alex makes a noncommittal sound. He’s still avoiding George’s eye, but there’s a change in his carriage, an evasive sort of shrinking that makes George’s stomach clench with horror. There’s a high dreadful ringing in his ears, as though someone had fired a gun at him from close range. Perhaps it had been foolish of him to hope that Alex would be able to exercise restraint, but he’d done it all the same, hoped that the damage would be limited to sunken ships and a handful of soldiers drowned in the confusion. But it’s clear now, clear as if Alex had handed it to him in writing.

Alex killed.

Alex ate.

“Lafayette,” George says faintly.

“I know, sir!” Lafayette chirps in delight. “What do we need to waste powder and bullets for when we’ve got Alexander here, eh? Send him off to work and down go their ships and overboard go their generals, they’ll be surrendering by fall at this rate—”

“Laf, shut up,” says Alex suddenly, with unwarranted sharpness, and Lafayette bugs his eyes out at him in reproach. George is already on high alert, but Lafayette launches right back into his excited babble, and it takes George a second to parse out what’s been said to get that reaction. Down go their ships and overboard go their…

“Their generals,” George repeats. Oh. Oh, no. No, surely it was just a turn of phrase, just Lafayette being his usual hyperbolic self. Means nothing at all. He’s overreacting. Please, God, let him be overreacting.

Lafayette raises his eyebrows incredulously, and Alex goes the sick pale green of a frog’s belly, and George knows he is not.

“You mean to say you didn’t even tell him the best part?” Lafayette swats at Alex in a playful way that would get anyone else’s hand torn off at the wrist. “Or were your escorts telling tales? I ought to give them a good scare for spreading lies, I bet the skinny one, what’s-his-name, I could carry him a good ways up in the air, high enough to—”

“What tales, Lafayette?” George asks, unable to hide the urgency in his voice.

“Nothing, he doesn’t know what he’s talking about, Laf, will you—”

“There’s no need to be rude, I’m allowed to ask a question, just tell me, is it true what they’re telling the enlisted men or not?”

“They’re telling—? Oh, God. Oh, I’m going to kill them.”

“Yes, yes,” says Lafayette, flapping a hand in supreme unconcern for the escorts’ lives, “but you do not answer my question—”

“Lafayette, what did he do, what on earth did he—”

“Later, Laf, for God’s sake—”

“—is it true, or is it not, that you drowned General Clinton in sight of all his men?”

Alex makes a strangled noise. It’s almost a wonder that George can hear it, over the sound of his own blood roaring in his ears.

“That is enough,” he manages to say, in a voice barely above a whisper.

“They are saying that you kissed him long and deep before you ripped the heart from his chest,” Lafayette prattles on, with that glassily manic bird-smile on his face, “but I think this cannot be true, for one thing, John would be furious, and for another…”

“That. Is. Enough,” George repeats. Not much more volume to his voice, but the tone is such that Lafayette cuts himself off with a small squawk of surprise and recoils from George in alarm.

“I, I,” Lafayette splutters. “I don’t, did I…ah. Oh dear.” Lafayette’s mouth snaps shut, and he droops. “This is, perhaps, one of those human things, isn’t it?”

“…Human things.”

“One of your, your rules for fighting. For when you can kill, and whom, and, um.” If he wilts any more he’s going to collapse in a heap on the floor. “Forgive me, it’s…it’s very difficult for us to remember…we don’t war as your folk do, you see. Don’t have the same rules. Not for things like this.” He glances at Alex for backup. Alex stands as still as though he’d been carved from ice.

George nods curtly. It’s all he has the patience for just now. God preserve him from faery creatures and their thrice-damned denseness, their disregard for any rules but their own incomprehensible ones.

Lafayette is still, somehow, attempting to salvage things. “General, sir, may I just say—it was not, it was never my intention to—”

“Thank you, Lafayette.” George would like to wring his neck. Instead, he gestures sharply at the tent flap. “We’ll speak of it later. I have matters to discuss with Alexander. Good evening, Marquis.”

“Sir—”

“Out.”

Even a faery couldn’t withstand the note of command in George’s voice. Lafayette scuttles off, thoroughly chastened.

Alex remains. His mouth works a little, as though he’d like to argue, but for once, nothing comes out.

“You…” George has to force the words out. “You murdered a general. You murdered General Clinton. When were you planning on telling me this?”

“I didn’t know it was—”

“Do not lie to me, Alexander.”

“…I wasn’t sure which one it was. He was. Not just then.” The feral rage from earlier has leeched out of Alex’s voice. He sounds almost frightened now. “I knew he was someone important. But the name, you humans and your names… He was—in the way. Shouting. I had the helmsman, but he kept shouting, he was going to snap him out of it, he was going to ruin everything. So I told him to stop. And he was strong-minded, I didn’t know how long I could hold him, and the other men too. So I told him to fall. I told him to come to me.” Lantern light flickers in his eyes, black as oil slicks. “And he did.”

“They were in retreat.” George turns away from Alex. Braces himself on his desk. His hands shake. “You said you understood how we do things. The rules of human war. And then you do this? Kill a man—an officer—in cold blood just for getting in the way of your sport?”

Alex flinches at that word, at the naked scorn in George’s voice, but rallies as best he can. “It was just one slip. Just one. I barely even—I let him go as soon as I realized who—”

“And was that before or after you’d torn out his throat?”

Very quiet in the tent, but for George’s labored breaths, and Alex’s shallow, painful ones. “I let him go,” is all Alex says. “I did. In the end.”

George says nothing.

“I tried.” Ragged. “I just wanted to help.”

Silence. This is your son, jeers a shrill, mocking voice in George’s head, this is what’s left of him, this thing wearing his skin and his name and his life is what you have for a legacy. And aren’t you lucky to have found him again? Aren’t you? Aren’t you?

Rustle of fabric, of Alex shifting foot to foot. His feet. They must hurt, after traveling overland from the bay to meet the rest of the army. The pity wells up inside him at last, loath though he is to feel it. Poor patchwork creature. Poor dead child in someone else’s body.

Poor little murderer. George could choke on the ugliness of it all.

He counts breaths again. In and out, in and out. Soothing rhythm, like waves rolling in and washing back. Doesn’t think about blood in Alex’s mouth. Doesn’t think about Alex stretching his arms out of the water, all alluring, and telling a man to come to me, fall to me, let me hold you. Doesn’t think about the harsh little noises Alex is making right now, across the tent, his shoulders tense and hunched to hide the tremble in them.

In and out. In and out. The lump in George’s throat recedes bit by bit.

“There will be reprisals for this,” he says quietly, when he trusts himself to open his mouth without screaming or cursing or weeping. “Undoubtedly so. I’ll expect a full report tomorrow on your doings so our officers can be prepared for the worst.”

“Sir,” Alex begins. George raises a silencing hand.

“That will be all for now, Alexander.” Dismissed hovers on the tip of his tongue, but he can’t spit it out. Not sure what he’s hoping for. A sincere apology, maybe, or for General Clinton to step through the flap of the tent and say I’m terribly sorry, there must have been some mistake, I’m quite all right, or for Alex to slough off his scales and blink his eyes back to brown and magically, miraculously, transform back into the human boy he ought to have been.

Unwillingly, George drags his gaze up to Alex’s face. Alex stares back, the green bleeding in long smears down his cheeks, and then, to George’s great surprise, he sketches a low bow, with as much grace as he can muster up from Laurens’ lessons in human etiquette.

“Please excuse my lack of decorum, sir,” Alex says, his voice shaking. “It was—wrong of me to act without seeking your approval. Wrong of me to speak to you as I did, before. I hope you can forgive me.” He straightens, with a horrible, tentative glint of hope in his eyes that squeezes George’s heart in a vise.

So close to the mark, and yet—

George feels sick.

“Alex,” he says, praying that by the time the name leaves his lips he’ll have found something to say that’s not no, no, no, why does it always have to be so hard, why can’t you just understand for once?

Alex is ahead of him. Something on George’s face or in his tone must give him away. The look of fragile hope evaporates. Pain there instead, in the set of his jaw, in the thin pale line of his lips. Even in those cold flat predator’s eyes of his.

“I’d better go, sir. Too long out of water.” says Alex. His lips twist bitterly. “A shark is still a shark, even if you dress it up pretty and call it son. Isn’t it.” Before George can stop him, Alex has turned away and lifted the tent flap to go.

The back of his coat is already rucked up over the pointed fin sprouting there.

[swan-archive]

I love your murderfish au so much it's probably going to be one of my fave mermaid aus of all time at this point lol I was wondering tho how murderfish!johns first hunt would go? I loved both of those chapters so much!!!

hello, soldier, says John, and the young Brit kneeling at the water’s edge startles and jumps to his feet. John ducks down low in the water, as if he’d been startled too, but doesn’t dive all the way under, doesn’t take his eyes off the man in his bright red coat. mustn’t lose sight of the prey.

what—what— the redcoat stammers. balled-up shirt in his hands—not important enough to hire a laundress, it seems. you—you’re a mermaid. you’re a fucking mermaid.

yes, obviously, and John would like to roll his eyes and launch himself out of the water at the man, but he restrains himself. smiles soothingly. close-lipped. Alex has been very clear on that point. don’t give the game up right away, don’t go straight for the throat, let ‘em get their guard down, let ‘em relax before you—

—kill them.

Alex had winced a little. i mean, yeah, but i was trying to be polite about it.

why?

well, i—you—this is new to you. doing it for yourself. it’s, for a human, it’s—i didn’t want to scare you, or, or…

John had rolled his eyes. look, you can mother hen me all you want later, but for now just tell me the right way to do it, and i’ll do it, yeah? no point in pussyfooting around.

i suppose. Alex had looked at him hard, unblinking, for a long moment, before changing the subject to Compulsion. not the first time he’s come over all suspicious since John was changed, as though he’s expecting John to break down in—not in tears, they can’t cry, but in something like that—over his lost humanity any second. touching, but unnecessary. John’s adjusting quickly. quick enough to surprise himself, even, at times, but this now is just a matter of practicality. he’s a mermaid. he has to eat. and in order to eat, he has to hunt. that’s all there is to it. no need for hysterics, Alex, get a grip.

and speaking of Alex—

Alex makes his appearance, bobbing to the surface just downstream of John. scales a warm gold all over, like his skin would be if he were human, green only just visible in the hollow of his throat and the webs between his fingers. the redcoat jitters, outnumbered, makes as if to dash off, but Alex lays his head to the side and looks up at him out of the corners of his big dark eyes. a well-practiced act. John recognizes that coy flutter of eyelashes, that coquettish set to the shoulders, from when he and Alex had shared a tent and a bedroll.

don’t be scared, says Alex. sings Alex. don’t be scared, we won’t hurt you, all we wanted was to see you. funny how he sounds to John now; John had never really understood Alex’s complaints about having a less-than-stellar voice, but now that John’s a mermaid too he can hear the rough edges and the muddled tone that human ears couldn’t catch. can hear Alex working harder to straighten those out, to keep his Compulsion true. John lets out a low, rolling hum, and Alex glances at him—i can do it myself, thank you— but it bolsters his voice a little bit, and when he sighs please don’t go the redcoat steps back toward the riverbank, his will softening.

why’d you want to see me? he asks, still with an edge of distrust to his voice.

why not? why wouldn’t we want to? face like that. body like that. ‘course we’d want to see.

handsome, purrs John, adding his voice to Alex’s, and the redcoat shivers. handsome boy. wanted to see you close.

see you, echoes Alex.

touch you.

hold you.

wanted to… John’s tail swishes through the water, sinuous. less vulgar than a wink and a bitten lip, but a human would read it just the same. a human is reading it just the same, to judge by the flush on the redcoat’s cheeks.

you won’t— he says a little thickly. shakes his head like a dog bothered by flies. you won’t hurt me? promise you won’t hurt me.

Alex smiles. teeth very close to the surface. promise. come here now. come here. let us hold you.

just for a moment. only a moment, and then i have to get back to my regiment. the redcoat kneels back down where he’d been sitting before, and John and Alex draw closer, closer. close enough to see the fine hairs on the redcoat’s knuckles, the pale nick of a scar on his chin. brown eyes and soft curling hair. he really is pretty, John thinks. the kind of boy he would have mooned and sighed and spent into his handkerchief over once upon a time, before he was a mermaid, before Alex. now the pretty face is less important to him than the warm blood under the skin.

what’s your name, handsome boy, says John, reaching out of the water, laying his hand on the redcoat’s arm. greenblue on red. redcoat doesn’t notice the claws.

Perkins. Thomas Perkins. er. Lieutenant Perkins.

an officer, fancy that, says Alex, letting a bit of humor bleed in under the Compulsion. isn’t this an honor. how-d’ye-do, Lieutenant Perkins. he shoots an amused look at John, and John fights down a snicker. he knows his uniforms as well as the next man, and if Perkins here is ranked any higher than a sergeant, John’ll beach himself. trying to show off for the pretty mermaids, maybe. serves them well enough. they have a name now, and there’s power in that, even if it’s just a hollow human by-word for a man and not a true naming.

hello, Thomas, John says simply. he watches Alex take the man by his other sleeve, careful not to touch skin. much harder to believe a creature willing and wanting if you know it’s as cold as John and Alex are.

Thomas-the-redcoat is fooled, though. and what do you ladies call yourselves, he asks sleepily. he settles down on the bank, dangles his legs in the water without bothering to take his boots off first.

does it matter, sings John. 

doesn’t matter at all, sings Alex. won’t you come and swim with us, Tom?

come here now, Thomas. pretty Thomas. handsome Tom. come swim with us. 

and that does it. the redcoat sighs and slips down into the river, and John and Alex catch him in their arms and bear him under. silver bubbles trailing from his mouth and nose. he blinks at them, dreamy, unconcerned, and stretches out a hand to stroke Alex’s cheek. his brow furrows a bit in confusion at the sandpapery scritch of Alex’s scales, not the soft smooth skin he’d expected to feel. Alex murmurs don’t worry don’t fear you are safe with us, and leans into the touch, and fixes their little redcoat with the stare of a hunting shark.

Alex smiles.

really smiles.

before Thomas has time to even go stiff with fear, Alex lunges forward and buries his needle teeth in the boy’s neck.

Thomas goes urk— and a thread of blood unspools in the water and John smells it, tastes it in his mouth and in his nose and in his flaring gills, and the hunger coiled in his belly leaps up sharp and fierce and screaming. he clamps his fingers around Thomas’ arm and yanks him close and bites down on his shoulder through thick red fabric. venom in his mouth, bitter, and hot sweet blood. he jerks his head to the side and tears off a mouthful of flesh, gulps it down, and it’s so good, so much better than squirming fish, so much better than he can ever remember human food being, so warm, so alive, he needs more, he needs more.

Alex snarls something in the mermaid language John still only half-understands, stop and mine and don’t, and John snarls back without words and hauls on the redcoat’s arm so hard he hears a crunch of bone. and like hell is he going to be left with nothing but a measly arm when there’s still soft unprotected belly to be spoken for, lungs and liver and guts, and heart still, somehow, beating away under a flimsy cage of ribs, so he drives forward and rams the redcoat down against the riverbed. the last of the breath escapes him in a hollow gurgle.

John sinks his claws into the redcoat’s chest. rips away flesh and bone as easily as red cloth. reaches into the hole there made and draws out the heart, hot as a coal against his cold scales. tears into it. the whole world flushes red for a moment. beautiful, perfect red. iron on his tongue and in his gills. lifeblood sliding down his throat. 

it’s right. it’s good.

mine mine mine, howls Alex, clawing at John, jarring him back to reality. John hisses reflexively and darts backward with the heart in his hands, slaps Alex with his tail to send him reeling away with scales flaring poison-green. he bares his teeth at the interloper, at the kill-stealer, at the scavenging runt.

John, Alex wails, and the world fractures a little, slips out of true. John. that’s him. he is John Laurens, and he is holding in his hands the heart of a man, a man he just killed, a man he intends to eat. something in his head slams itself against the bars of its cage, screaming shrill and unintelligible. wrong. something is wrong. wrong to kill a man, and tear out his heart. wrong to eat it. wrong because—

John, Alex cries again, and John loses the shape of it. wrong because—this is Alex’s kill too. wrong to lay claim to it, when Alex lured the prey, when Alex had the first bite. he deserves to taste. yes, that must have been the problem. easy to fix.

Al-icks. the name is leaden and awkward on his tongue underwater. he tries again. Alex.

Alex blinks at him with sharp, distrustful eyes, his claws still curled threateningly.

Alex. John holds out what remains of the heart. difficult to shape the Mermish words, but it’s getting easier every day, every hour, and he finds them eventually. come. come to me, Alex. come to me.

Alex swims a little closer.

yours. yours, Alex. come to me. Alex. Alex.

Alex’s scales have faded back down to soft turquoise. still a lingering warmth in the twist of muscle and gore in John’s hands. Alex must be able to feel it in the water, just as John can.

yours, Alex, love. yours, love. come and take it. yours.

Alex reaches out and grips John’s wrists, hard enough to make John gasp. he bows his head over John’s hands.

mine, he agrees, and eats. tongue and lips and fangs against John’s scales. heartsblood in the water.

heartsblood in his mouth, when he finishes, when John pulls him up for a kiss.

[swan-archive]

#I feel like alexfish'd make a lot of sandcastles in an effort to make sense of human architecture probably#his are not nearly as nice as this one (via @silkkat, wrt this post)

!!! you are absolutely correct!

imagine, if you will, little Alexfish. or, maybe not quite so little; time is harder for him now than it was when he was human, but he knows it was dry season when he—became, and then there was rain and storm season and now it’s dry again. so, maybe he’s thirteen now. maybe a little younger. he’d been twelve when he changed, right? he must have been.

anyway, he’s up on the beach to bask. lying in the wet sand, wavelets lapping at his tailfin. it’s nice. he digs out a wallow for himself to get more comfortable. piles up the sand in little mounds. he remembers doing this, when he was a kid. Maman would take him and Jamie down to the beach, and while Jamie ran and splashed in the water with Dad and the bigger boys from around town, Alex would sit there in the cool sand at the edge of the water with his playmates and build sandcastles. driftwood for the drawbridge, seashell windows, a leaf stuck on the end of a stick flying as a pennant from the tallest tower.

what’s a castle, he asks himself, in that tone he remembers using when he was Alex-and-the-mermaid, asking what is money what is town what is home what is mother what is crying. a castle. like, a very very very big house. he tries and fails to imagine it. all he can picture is the rooms they’d had above the shop in Christiansted, and, much fuzzier, their house on Nevis, white walls and vines with yellow flowers growing on the veranda. so, like that, but...bigger.

he frowns. he knows there must’ve been castles in the books he’d read, but he can’t call up the memories. all he has blobby piles of sand, soon to be trampled by children’s feet or washed away by the tide.

all right, so no castle. house, though, house he can swing. feeling a bit whimsical, Alex mounds up another small pile, pats it smooth with his webbed hand. seashell windows—he roots around in the sand, finds a few chips of white shell, and presses them into the surface of the pile. no drawbridge, but he slithers onto the drier part of the beach and comes up with a likely-looking flattish pebble for a door. no flag either, but vines he can do, so he drapes a few strands of washed-up seaweed over the front. yes, that’s a nice touch. if he looks at it and tilts his head and squints, the image of their old home floats over the little sand-house.

something’s missing though. he considers. inspiration taps him on the shoulder. oh. oh, yes, that’d look good. he squirms down into the shallow water for a moment, sifts through the sand, and crawls back up onto the beach with four bits of wave-rounded coral in his hand. plants them in the undisturbed ground in front of his creation, two bigger ones, two smaller ones. props himself up on his elbows and nods in satisfaction.

there, perfect. a little sand-house and a little sand-family. Maman and Dad and Jamie and Alex-the-human. just like how it used to be. how it used to be before—

Alex’s smile falters. before Dad left them, left and didn’t come back, and Maman was taken by the illness, and Alex—well, Alex left too, in his way, didn’t he? slowly, he picks away the two bigger pebbles, and then the smallest one. just Jamie left. but Jamie had been working, hadn’t he? he’d been making a life for himself. he wouldn’t have stayed, not with everyone else gone. 

so just an empty house left. empty, with the vines shriveling and drying on the veranda. empty, the windows cracked and the door swinging open. empty. the brittle coral goes crunch in Alex’s grip.

their games on the beach had always ended in the same way.

Alex whirls around and, with one swift stroke of his tail, obliterates the sand-house.

[swan-archive]

@herowndeliverance continues in her fine tradition of generously allowing me to plagiarize the ever-loving shit out of her works! i thank the jesus baby EVERY day and hope that at some point i will Git Gud enough to do them justice.

anyways here’s Patsy teaching a fish to play the harpsichord

--

“What is that?”

Patsy yelps, mid-measure, and slams her hands down on the harpsichord keys. The instrument lets out a dreadful ploing and the interloper leaps out of sight behind the doorframe with a yelp of his own.

“Alexander?” Patsy asks, when the discord has died down to a ringing twangggggggg and her heart has settled down a bit. Rhetorical—Mama and Papa would never sneak up on her like that while she’s practicing, and Jacky wouldn’t bother hiding after jumping out at her. Her suspicions are confirmed, though, when Alex pokes his head around the doorframe, wincing at the racket.

“You scared the sh…y-you scared me, Alex,” Patsy says, a little annoyed at the interruption. “I didn’t even hear you come up!”

“I didn’t mean to surprise you,” he says, hovering in the doorway. Patsy knows she ought to be nervous, caught alone with him, her mother’s warned her enough times to just be careful, please, your Papa trusts him but I worry, all right, you can never really know with a creature like that…But it’s very hard to be scared of Alex when he’s twisting his hands like that, shifting from foot to foot like a schoolboy who’s been put on the spot before the whole class.

“Did you need something?” Patsy asks pointedly, after they’ve stood there considering each other for several long, awkward seconds.

“No, it’s, I only wanted to know…I was in the other room reading and I heard you in here. And I just wanted to ask what that was.” He gestures at the harpsichord vaguely.

“It’s a sonata I’ve been learning in my lessons. Scarlatti. It’s not ready to show anyone yet,” she says, with a little frown. “Not ready to perform. I’ve just learned it. It’ll sound better when I’ve figured out the fingering on this middle section. That’s why I was so surprised when you popped up out of nowhere, I didn’t want someone hearing it before I’d really worked through it.”

“I see,” says Alex, with that look on his face that means he’s trying to decide between asking for clarification and looking like a fool or pretending he understands what’s being said to him and risking being called out. He stands there mutely for a moment.

“…Oh,” says Patsy at last. She pats the cover of the harpsichord. “You mean this—? Um. It’s a harpsichord. A musical instrument? You press the keys here and it makes notes with the strings inside…” She trails off, hoping Alex won’t enquire as to how the mechanism works; her mother is indulgent with her, as a rule, but even Martha might be given pause if Patsy and Alex dismantle the harpsichord for a science project.

Alex seems satisfied with that explanation, though, and strays closer, peering under the cover. He runs his fingers over the strings, producing a soft shimmery sound. “It was nice,” he says at last. “That song from before. Scarlatti. What does it mean?”

“Mean? Well, Scarlatti’s the composer, he was from Naples…”

“No, like, was it a hunting-song, a warning-song, an—um—a l-loving-song…”

“There aren’t any words to it, Alex, it doesn’t mean anything. It’s just music. Just a song. A song-song.”

“Really?” Alex comes around and examines the keyboard. “I would’ve sworn—there were parts of it that sounded almost like words.” He reaches out and depresses one of the higher keys, pling. Hums a little, high in his throat, in that surprisingly sweet contralto of his, and examines the sheet music on the stand. He traces his finger along a run of sixteenth notes. “Is this the song? You can read this?”

“Yes—”

“Show me.”

“Show you, please,” Patsy says, sarcastically—Papa’s wrestled enough with Alex’s lack of manners for it to have become a household joke—but Alex hunches his shoulders and looks at Patsy with a shy, tentative expression.

“Show me, please,” he says. And, okay, maybe it’s a good thing that those lessons in deportment haven’t taken yet, because that was…kind of charming. Patsy finds herself softening against her own will.

“All right, here.” She takes Alex’s hand and places it on the keys. “All the notes have letter names, A through G, the lines for treble clef are E-G-B-D-F, that’s every good boy does fine, and the spaces spell out face, F-A-C-E…”

“I can spell,” Alex complains, but he dutifully plays each note along with Patsy. His skin is cold under her hand. “And these ones, the in-between notes?”

“Those are the flats and sharps. See, here—this little symbol. This means the F note, but a half-step sharp. So the key between F and G.”

“Wait, but surely you could—there’s no key between these two.” Alex taps the middle C and the B just below. “So you could call this C a B sharp?”

“You…could,” Patsy allows. “But most of the time you wouldn’t. It’s easier to just call it a C.”

“You could even call it an, um—” Alex does a quick count of the keys. “An A-sharp-sharp-sharp.”

“That’s stupid.”

“An E-sharp-sharp-sharp-sharp—”

“Stop, now you’re just being ridiculous!” says Patsy, laughing and swatting at his arm. Alex grins at her with a mischievous air; he’s warmed to her touch and her proximity, and his eyes are very big and dark, and—why is she blushing all of a sudden?

She coughs, stares very intently at the sheet music, willing the heat to go out of her face. “Right. So. Those are the notes. And there are key signatures and time signatures and things. I can teach you those next, if you want. It’s all quite simple.”

Alex chirrups to himself, executing a half-tempo, clumsy approximation of the run he’d pointed out before. “And this line, here—it’s the same as the first one?”

“No, that’s the bass clef, the notes read differently for the left hand.”

“That doesn’t make any sense, why would you write it so you have to read two different things at once?”

“It’s because the lines overlap, sometimes, so you have to be able to read them separately or together, like this…” Patsy plays a short passage from one of her other pieces to demonstrate.

“Oh. Huh.” Alex cocks his head at the sheet music. “It just seems overcomplicated to me, that’s all. The way we do it, you don’t even have to write it down, you just hear and you remember—” He snaps his mouth shut, darts a guilty glance at Patsy. Tries again. “I mean, um, the way mermaids do it—”

There’s a bizarre flush rising on his cheeks, splotchy and varicolored like an old bruise, green-brown-purple. It’s very unpleasant to look at. Perhaps it’s better to move past this quickly. “Yes, I’m sure that’s all fine for you,” says Patsy, shuffling through the sheet music on the stand, “but humans can’t just memorize a song after hearing it once.”

“I’m not a—”

“It’s fine, Alex. I know you’re a mermaid. I’m not stupid, after all. And you’re a terrible liar. So why bother pretending?”

“But the Colonel said—that is, I’m not to—” begins Alex, miserably.

“Never mind what Papa said. That’s for other people, not for us. I certainly won’t tell anyone about you. And I don’t care what you are, as long as you don’t try and eat me. So it’s not worth worrying about, not now. Not here. Not with me.”

Alex bites his lip, but relaxes slightly, enough to tap out a few more notes on the keyboard. Patsy shoots him an encouraging smile.

“Anyway,” she says, “I taught you this, now you have to teach me something. You must know an awful lot of songs that nobody’s ever even tried to play on a harpsichord.”

Alex looks at her in surprise before barking out a genuine laugh. “You couldn’t play them,” he says. That grin from before is back. “Not even close.”

“Oh, yeah?” Patsy meets his eyes in challenge. “We’ll see about that, won’t we?”

[swan-archive]

With new new murderfish!john au, all I can think is "so who *will* lay the eggs?" Also, Frances with her murderfish papas.

anon! this is an important question to be sure, but can you give ‘em a little breathing room, please? John was just dying—

—he was surely just about to die, he heard the crack of the gunshot and almost simultaneously the piercing all-encompassing burn of the bullet in his side, and he’d fallen there on the riverbank, and thought Alex will be so angry with me, he always said if you have to go then leave it to me, I’d make it gentle, make it so easy you’d never even know you were—

—and then cold arms around him dragging him down the bank and his blood spiraling away into the water and he drifts, he drifts, everything goes black—

—someone pushing food between his lips, must be Alex, definitely Alex, those claws against his skin and the round black eyes even wider with concern, and John says I didn’t die and Alex says yeah, looks like and almost smiles, and John says did we take the ferry and Alex just frowns, and don’t look at me like that Alex it was a simple question did we take the ferry or not did my troops make it out god DAMN it Alex will you just—

—he feels hot and cold in flashes, hot and cold and hot and cold and the bullet in his side always aching and aching and aching, Alex’s hand a soothing coolness on his forehead Alex’s hand a dreadful chill on his icy skin, and he cries out for his mother, cries out for his father, just cries out, and if he’d known he was just going to die like this in the mud on the riverbank after a failed skirmish he would’ve told Alex to just leave him where he’d fallen, why didn’t you just let me die, at least it could have meant something if I’d fallen in battle like that, you bastard, you selfish animal—

—not safe, there are Redcoats crawling all over the countryside, and I can only sing down so many of them before…

then just leave me. just go. you can swim, can’t you? we’re by a river, aren’t we?

(an educated guess. dirt beneath him, so they’re somewhere outside; rushing sound in his ears, so probably near a river, unless he’s further gone than he thought he was. kind of hopes he is, at this point.)

I will not let you die. resolute. stubborn, stupid, beautiful Alex. 

don’t call me stupid.

oops. he didn’t know he was saying that out loud. Alex is dragging him back down the riverbank and down into the water. he can hardly feel the chill of it anymore. he lets the current pull him.

where, he slurs after a while.

hold on, John, hold on for me, I can fix this, I’ll fix—

—and then he’s floating in a blue-blackness like a night sky, and Alex is floating next to him, and there’s a great silver-white something in front of them and Alex is arguing desperately but the silver-white thing says not yours to bargain. he must choose for himself. let him speak.

do you want your self, or your life, little human boy?

John considers, through the haze of pain and blood loss and unreality. two things he doesn’t value much, at this point. he’d say take ‘em both if not for the look on Alex’s face. considers some more.

at least, if you’re alive, you can fight. you can do the work. you can do something. you die, the dream dies with you. 

and maybe he’d find his life worth living if he weren’t saddled with himself.

give me my life.

no, wait, Alex says—

—sunlight.

sunlight, and running water cool against his skin. no, not his skin. the sense of touch a little muted, a little diffuse. reaches down with a clumsy hand. feels slick, cool scale. feels it, and feels in it, feels his own hand on it.

John, John, says Alex’s voice, and then Alex is leaning over him, and oh, he’d never looked quite so beautiful before, had he? he can’t have, John would have remembered, would’ve torn down cities, would’ve bathed himself in blood for that kind of beauty. those eyes. those scales. those teeth. he feels a giddy little rush all down his body. Alex swallows hard, gone bright and shimmering turquoise from head to tailtip.

John reaches up to cup Alex’s cheek. his hand blue-tinged, clawed and webbed.

Alex.

yes, John.

I’m hungry, Alex.

[swan-archive]

Imagine the your son is now a murderfish letter: "Dear Henry Laurens, your son sustained a mortal wound in battle and is now a mermaid. My condolences/congratulations on your new fishy son. Gen. Washington P.S. pls see the attached guide on the care and keeping of murderous faeries."

“They said—all the letters said—they said you fell at Combahee, that you were shot, that you died a hero—”

“Can’t believe everything you read,” says Alex amiably.

“To be fair, I did get shot. And it was at Combahee.”

“We mourned you, we had a funeral—”

“Aw. That’s nice. Flowers on my grave. Just out of curiosity, did Francis—?”

“General Washington sent me his condolences!”

“And was the General in South Carolina at any point while he was drafting that letter? Yeah. People who haven’t seen the body shouldn’t be trusted to tell everyone about it,” says John with an irritable little snort. “I should’ve written you myself.”

“Like you would’ve been able to,” says Alex, throwing off his pilfered shirt and trousers and slipping back into the water. “Your handwriting’s worse than mine, probably, nowadays.” John splashes him, and Alex makes a face before diving under to change.

Henry is still goggling at John like John’s sprouted another head. Which—okay, he looks a little different, to be sure, but not that different, in the grand scheme of things. Still curly-haired and freckled, still hazel-eyed (although the quality of the color is different now, an odd flat metallic tone, his pupils catlike slits). Still, recognizably, John Laurens, albeit minus a couple of limbs.

“You didn’t—” Henry says. Stops. John waits patiently for him to finish. “You were shot. You were dying.”

“Yes, Dad, we went over this.”

“And then you were—” He visibly works over two or three different words in his head. Healed? Fixed? Ruined? “Changed,” he says at last.

“Obviously, yes.”

“That was in ‘82. Nearly two years ago. Two years…” There are tears in Henry’s eyes. “We mourned you, Jacky, why didn’t you come back to us, why wouldn’t you tell us you were alive?”

Two years, really? Doesn’t seem like that long. Time has a different feel to it, now that he’s a fish. Pools into a great shining present where words like two years ago and yesterday and before the war seem very meaningless. John does feel a little bad about that, though. He could’ve tried harder, he supposes. Swum across the Atlantic and popped up out of the Thames and explained it all to Henry in person. Gotten his hands on paper and ink, or at the very least dictated a letter for Alex to send off. Coulda, shoulda, woulda.

“I’m sorry, Dad,” is all he can say. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you all, really I didn’t. It was just—there was just—” He trails off, spreads his hands to encompass the change and the hunger and the adjustment to his new body and every little thing he can think of. “…It was a lot,” he finishes lamely.

“But—how, how did you, why are you like—what did you do to him, you monster, what did you do,” Henry chokes, stabbing an accusatory finger at Alex, who has just bobbed back to the surface.

“I didn’t do anything to him,” says Alex, rather offended. “I even told him to slow down and think about things for once in his stupid life, but did he listen to me? Does he ever listen to me? Nooooooo. And now look at him.”

“You love it, though,” John says, with a teasing smirk. Freckles showing bright blue against his scales. He leans over and nuzzles at Alex’s neck where the gills open up. Sensitive. Almost like being kissed on the mouth. 

“Pretty fish,” Alex purrs, and shivers. Henry looks as though he would like to vomit. John is faintly surprised at how little he cares about that. He can remember being hurt by the disgusted looks people used to throw at them, but it all seems very silly now with Alex sleek and greeny-blue and smiling in his arms.

“So, so,” Henry says, desperately trying to haul the conversation back to a place he can bear to look at, “So surely—you can land-walk, can’t you? Like…him? You’re here now, can’t you just come up out of the water and—”

“Um. Yeah. About that.” John works the sailfin on his back, folds it down, flares it up. New nervous tic. Funny little stretch in the muscles there. “It’s…I guess the legs were the trade-off for the. You know.” He gestures vaguely at the green-gold of his own belly, the smooth scale where there ought to be an ugly scar from the bullet. “So…no legs. It’s not so bad, really. I get around fine. ‘S long as there’s water.”

“Yes. Of course.” Henry lets out a bark of horrified laughter. “Stuck in the water, cut off from your family, from your country, from—humanity, how could you choose that, how do you live, how do you bear it?”

And this is starting to sound like one of the old arguments he and Henry had used to chase each other around with, although a little more hysterical in tone. How could you choose this, how can you justify this, why are you like this, I don’t understand how you can live like this. They’d never quite been on the level with each other back then, either. 

“The same way as anyone bears living, I guess—” John begins.

“Wait. Wait. Live, how do you live, oh, Jack—” Henry has gone very white. Another wave of horror dawning on his face. “Jack, what do you eat?”

John blinks at Henry. Looks at Alex. Looks back at Henry.

“Let’s just say we, ah, we don’t want for food,” John says, as delicately as he can. “Especially not while we’ve been here in town. We should be thanking you for putting us up, so to speak.”

“For…oh. Oh, God.” Henry sways like a sapling in a high wind. “There was. There was an overseer who went missing. Three days ago, he—we thought. We thought he’d just. Oh, my God.”

“He was a bad man,” says John with calm certainty. “I remembered him. Cruel. Unusually cruel. Sometimes you have to start small if you’re aiming for big changes along the line. And we were hungry.” 

Henry lets out a little wail. The legs go out from under him and he sits down hard in the grass and sandy dirt there at the edge of the river.

“Hey, no, it’s okay, Dad.” John hauls out onto the bank—with some difficulty, he’s adjusted to most things but still feels strange about how awkward and lumpen he is on land—and slither-crawls toward Henry. “It’s fine, it’s me, it’s just Jack, you know me…”

“No no no no no, get away from me get away get away,” sobs Henry, scuttling backward several feet. John grabs him by the ankle, pulls him up short. Clumsy hands, not much good for anything more involved than snatching a moving fish or dragging a thrashing human underwater, but strong. John reaches up and pats Henry comfortingly on the cheek, taking care to be extra gentle. It’s been so long since he’s touched a human that he didn’t intend to—

“Shh, Dad, it’s fine, don’t worry, don’t be afraid, just hold still. I won’t hurt you. Just relax, you’re safe, you’re safe…”

“John,” Alex chides lazily from the water, and John startles a bit and snips off the thread of the Compulsion between his teeth. Smiles guiltily at Henry. Henry shakes, and shakes, and shakes, and doesn’t move. Can’t, maybe.

“Sorry,” says John. “My mistake. Still learning how to control that.” John probes at the space in his head that should be filling up with disgust, horror, self-loathing. Something rejecting the way he is now. Finds nothing. Oh well. Sometimes it appears after the fact, sends him retching and trembling down to the mud at the bottom of the river for Alex to chase and reassure and soothe with shark-toothed kisses. Sometimes it doesn’t. John supposes he’ll deal with that when and if it creeps up on him.

For now, though, Henry is quivering in front of him, cringing and making little mewly fear-noises, and, silly human, didn’t John apologize, didn’t he say he didn’t mean to? Nothing personal. Just instinct. As a gesture of good faith, he lets his scales fade down to a dull, unthreatening silvery-bronze. Pats Henry on the cheek again, pat pat pat. Careful with the soft little human. His skin so warm and so pink against John’s shining scales.

“Jacky,” Henry whispers.

“It’s fine, Dad. I’m here now, like you said. I’m alive. Aren’t you happy I’m alive? Isn’t it better this way?” John cocks his head curiously. Flares his fin. “Isn’t it better?”